There are already more Irishmen in this State of New York than in all the Republic of Ireland; if the tradition is to live, it will be by the memory of our minds and the work of our own hearts. I want that tradition—and those of all the other immigrant groups that built this country—to live. I for one would not be happy to see this nation bland and homogeneous, its speech and literature reduced to the common denominator of mass-circulation magazines, its life settled down into a uniform suburb stretching from coast to coast. What would Abie’s Irish Rose have been if Abie was Jewish and Rose Irish in name only?