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The Game. The freewheeling International Set is helping to erode the ancient New England notion that the golden doors to Society are labeled WHITE PROTESTANTS ONLY. Anti-Semitism, less virulent in European social circles than in the U.S., increased in America around the turn of the century (probably as a result of the waves of immigration from central Europe), and not many Jews have rooted themselves as solidly in the Old Guard as August Belmont (1853-1924), whose name is a Franco-Anglicization of Schoenberg. Roman Catholics are solidly Old Guard in such Catholic-settled cities as New Or leans, St. Louis and Baltimore, but in heavily Catholic Boston they—and therefore the Kennedys—have been far more Out than In.
The open-end Society shows no signs of reverting to the closed, bloodline formalities of the past—urbanization and the high mobility of jet-age living will keep it open, just as water in constant motion does not freeze. This is not completely to the good; the old landed families, for all their stuffiness, produced standards and had the authority to enforce them. It will be the responsibility of America's New Guard, busily working up on charities and civic enterprises and into the Social Register, to nurture an elite of service to counterbalance the merely rich, chic and amusing internationals whom Vogue calls "the Beautiful People," and Women's Wear Daily calls "the Arrogants and Elegants."
Ultimately, Society is a game in which the established are always challenging the newcomers to prove themselves. Their authority is largely that they got there first and therefore make the rules. It is also a game at which anyone can choose not to play—and some do so choose. But as long as there is room at the top and flow from below, Society is a yeasty tonic for democracy. Said 19th century Novelist William Dean Howells: "Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself."