ABSTRACT
The term “nationality” has two meanings. It is applied to designate collectively the citizens of one State, as when people describe a person’s nationality as American, French, or Italian, meaning by this that he is a citizen of the United States, France, or Italy. The term “nation” is somewhat less ambiguous, for it is generally used to designate a political unit, a State, although it is also occasionally used collectively for the members of a nationality regardless of their political affiliations. Italians and Germans before the political unification of their countries were sometimes designated as the Italian or German nation. The notion prevails among ourselves with equal force, for people are haunted by fear of the ominous influx of “inferior” races from eastern and southern Europe, of the mongrelization of the American people by intermixture with these types, because it is believed that people may lose in this way the characteristic mental traits that belong to the Northwest Europeans.
