31 JANUARY 1925, Page 13

THE PERCENTAGE OF ANGLO-SAXONS IN THE UNITED STATES [To the

Editor of the SPECTATOR.]

Sra,—Mr. Julian S. Huxley's delightful and stimulating first article in his " America Revisited " will doubtless give clarity and precision to the views that Englishmen at this time hold of the United States and of its inhabitants. For Americans especially, Mr. Huxley's observations and deductions will have very great interest. It is true that if he will be suffi- ciently frank and unreserved—and there is no reason to think he will not—there may be more or less stirring among the dry bones. But that will matter very little or not at all. For the best of us even though the eyes be very friendly, it is a chasten- ing and salutary experience to see ourselves as others see us.

The readers of the Spectator have reason to be grateful to its Editor and to Mr. Huxley for what they have read and have still to read of " America Revisited."

I believe though that many Americans will hear with sur- prise and some dismay : Finally, there is racial stock.

Roughly ten per cent. of the whole population are negro ; only about twenty per cent. Anglo-Saxon." One would not rashly question Mr. Huxley's statistics, but I confess myself in some doubt as to just what he means by " Anglo-Saxon."

Those who pursue Science are shut up to the use—when they can—of close and accurately defined terms. There springs to my mind an occasion when Mr. Balfour in debate in the House spoke of a certain organized body as a " corporation." The then Attorney-General brusquely interjected : " It is not a corporation." To which Mr. Balfour sweetly made answer : ‘` I was talking English not Law." , Now, if Mr. Huxley were talking Science when he said that only about twenty per cent.

of the people of the United States are of Anglo-Saxon racial stock, I should not feel qualified to take issue with him ; but if he were using the term in the same sense that is generally given to it by English-speaking peoples, I should like to say that it is a prevailing belief in the United States that more than fifty per cent. of the White population trace the main stems of descent to ancestors of British stock. This is no place for details, but it is not altogether without significance to find an Australian—Sir Henry J. Braddon—writing recently of his countrymen : " They seemingly do not realize that over fifty per cent. of the people in the United States are of Anglo- Saxon origin, and that the Anglo-Saxons determine the trend of American civilization."

I will not venture closely to define the term " Anglo-Saxon " as popularly used, because—frankly speaking—I cannot, but when Mr. Stanley Baldwin in an address talks of the Anglo- Saxonrace, I do not suspect him of poetic licence, nor do I say to him or to myself, " It is not a race." I recognize that he is speaking English, and am conscious of some power within myself to relate his term to the substance of his speech.

For more than a thousand years there has been a varying but continuous infiltration of French and of Dutch blood into Great Britain, but I imagine no Briton thinks himself less of an Anglo-Saxon for all that. The Cornishman differs con- siderably from a native of Norfolk, nor is there a close resem- blance between the natives of Devon and of Lancashire ;

and a man from Kent would distinguish points of difference in a native of Warwickshire, just as a native of the Hebrides

might look upon a man from Glasgow. A Heligonian may have a tincture of Dutch blood in his veins not shared with his fellow Yorkshiremen ; but I imagine all these varieties fall within the scope of the term Anglo-Saxon as popularly con- ceived. Using the terms Protestant and Catholic as mere labels to classify conveniently two races in Ireland, or two strongly variant branches of the same racial stem, the man in the street in the United States would be apt offhand to accept the'Protestants as of Anglo-Saxon stock, while boggling vigorously over the Catholics. I will not enter on the highly debatable ground of spiritual values, ideals, custom, use and wont, laws, and literature further than to say there are not a few in the United States who, however illogically, believe that such things arc embraced in the Anglo-Saxon race consciousness.

If. Americans must accept completely Mr. Huxley's state- ment they may very seriously ask themselves if their attempt to protect their civilization—such as it is—by forbidding immigration from the Mediterranean peoples, from Europe east of Germany, and from the Orient, has not been made too December 22nd.