Outspoken Essays Part 2

[1] _Times Literary Supplement_, July 18, 1918.

[2] Hearnshaw, _Democracy at the Crossroads_, p. 63.

[3] Miss M. Loane. Mr. Stephen Reynolds has said the same.

[4] Professor Hearnshaw quotes: 'Il y a opposition evidente et irreductible entre les principes socialistes et les principes democratiques. Il n'y a pas de conceptions politiques qui soient separees par des abimes plus profonds que la democratie et le socialisme' (Le Bon). 'Socialism must be built on ideas and inst.i.tutions totally different from the ideas and inst.i.tutions of democracy' (Levine). 'La democratic tend a la conciliation des cla.s.ses, tandis que le socialisme organise la lutte de cla.s.se' (Lagardelle).

[5] A.D. Lewis, _Syndicalism and the General Strike_.

[6] _The Division of the Product of Industry_.

[7] _First and Last Things_ (pp. 148-9. Published in 1908).

PATRIOTISM

(1915)

The sentiment of patriotism has seemed to many to mark an arrest of development in the psychical expansion of the individual, a half-way house between mere self-centredness and full human sympathy. Some moralists have condemned it as pure egoism, magnified and disguised.

'Patriotism,' says Ruskin, 'is an absurd prejudice founded on an extended selfishness.' Mr. Grant Allen calls it 'a vulgar vice--the national or collective form of the monopolist instinct.' Mr. Havelock Ellis allows it to be 'a virtue--among barbarians.' For Herbert Spencer it is 'reflex egoism--extended selfishness.' These critics have made the very common mistake of judging human emotions and sentiments by their roots instead of by their fruits. They have forgotten the Aristotelian canon that the 'nature' of anything is its completed development (he phusis telos estin). The human self, as we know it, is a transitional form. It had a humble origin, and is capable of indefinite enhancement.

Ultimately, we are what we love and care for, and no limit has been set to what we may become without ceasing to be ourselves. The case is the same with our love of country. No limit has been set to what our country may come to mean for us, without ceasing to be our country. Marcus Aurelius exhorted himself--'The poet says, Dear city of Cecrops; shall not I pay, Dear city of G.o.d?' But the city of G.o.d in which he wished to be was a city in which he would still live as 'a Roman and an Antonine.'

The citizen of heaven knew that it was his duty to 'hunt Sarmatians' on earth, though he was not obliged to imbrue his hands with 'Caesarism.'

Patriotism has two roots, the love of clan and the love of home. In migratory tribes the former alone counts; in settled communities diversities of origin are often forgotten. But the love of home, as we know it, is a gentler and more spiritual bond than clans.h.i.+p. The word home is a.s.sociated with all that makes life beautiful and sacred, with tender memories of joy and sorrow, and especially with the first eager outlook of the young mind upon a wonderful world. A man does not as a rule feel much sentiment about his London house, still less about his office or factory. It is for the home of his childhood, or of his ancestors, that a man will fight most readily, because he is bound to it by a spiritual and poetic tie. Expanding from this centre, the sentiment of patriotism embraces one's country as a whole.

Both forms of patriotism--the local and the racial, are frequently alloyed with absurd, unworthy or barbarous motives. The local patriot thinks that Peebles, and not Paris, is the place for pleasure, or asks whether any good thing can come out of Nazareth. To the Chinaman all aliens are 'outer barbarians' or 'foreign devils.' Admiration for ourselves and our inst.i.tutions is too often measured by our contempt and dislike for foreigners. Our own nation has a peculiarly bad record in this respect. In the reign of James I the Spanish amba.s.sador was frequently insulted by the London crowd, as was the Russian amba.s.sador in 1662; not, apparently, because we had a burning grievance against either of those nations, but because Spaniards and Russians are very unlike Englishmen. That at least is the opinion of the sagacious Pepys on the later of these incidents. 'Lord! to see the absurd nature of Englishmen, that cannot forbear laughing and jeering at anything that looks strange.' Defoe says that the English are 'the most churlish people alive' to foreigners, with the result that 'all men think an Englishman the devil.' In the 17th and 18th centuries Scotland seems to have ranked as a foreign country, and the presence of Scots in London was much resented. Cleveland thought it witty to write:--

Had Cain been Scot, G.o.d would have changed his doom; Not forced him wander, but confined him home.

And we all remember Dr. Johnson's gibes.

British patriotic arrogance culminated in the 18th and in the first half of the 19th century; in Lord Palmerston it found a champion at the head of the government. Goldsmith describes the bearing of the Englishman of his day:--

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye, I see the lords of human kind pa.s.s by.

Michelet found in England 'human pride personified in a people,' at a time when the characteristic of Germany was 'a profound impersonality.'

It may be doubted whether even the arrogant brutality of the modern Prussian is more offensive to foreigners than was the calm and haughty a.s.sumption of superiority by our countrymen at this time. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were quite of Milton's opinion, that, when the Almighty wishes something unusually great and difficult to be done, He entrusts it to His Englishmen. This unamiable characteristic was probably much more the result of insular ignorance than of a deep-seated pride. 'A generation or two ago,' said Mr. Asquith lately, 'patriotism was largely fed and fostered upon reciprocal ignorance and contempt.' The Englishman seriously believed that the French subsisted mainly upon frogs, while the Frenchman was equally convinced that the sale of wives at Smithfield was one of our national inst.i.tutions. This fruitful source of international misunderstanding has become less dangerous since the facilities of foreign travel have been increased. But in the relations of Europe with alien and independent civilisations, such as that of China, we still see brutal arrogance and vulgar ignorance producing their natural results.

Another cause of perverted patriotism is the inborn pugnacity of the _bete humaine_. Our species is the most cruel and destructive of all that inhabit this planet. If the lower animals, as we call them, were able to formulate a religion, they might differ greatly as to the shape of the beneficent Creator, but they would nearly all agree that the devil must be very like a big white man. Mr. McDougall[8] has lately raised the question whether civilised man is less pugnacious than the savage; and he answers it in the negative. The Europeans, he thinks, are among the most combative of the human race. We are not allowed to knock each other on the head during peace; but our civilisation is based on cut-throat compet.i.tion; our favourite games are mimic battles, which I suppose effect for us a 'purgation of the emotions' similar to that which Aristotle attributed to witnessing the performance of a tragedy: and, when the fit seizes us, we are ready to engage in wars which cannot fail to be disastrous to both combatants. Mr. McDougall does not regret this disposition, irrational though it is. He thinks that it tends to the survival of the fittest, and that, if we subst.i.tute emulation for pugnacity, which on other grounds might seem an unmixed advantage, we shall have to call in the science of eugenics to save us from becoming as sheeplike as the Chinese. There is, however, another side to this question, as we shall see presently.

Another instinct which has supplied fuel to patriotism of the baser sort is that of acquisitiveness. This tendency, without which even the most rudimentary civilisation would be impossible, began when the female of the species, instead of carrying her baby on her back and following the male to his hunting-grounds, made some sort of a lair for herself and her family, where primitive implements and stores of food could be kept.

There are still tribes in Brazil which have not reached this first step towards humanisation. But the instinct of h.o.a.rding, like all other instincts, tends to become hypertrophied and perverted; and with the inst.i.tution of private property comes another inst.i.tution--that of plunder and brigandage. In private life, no motive of action is at present so powerful and so persistent as acquisitiveness, which, unlike most other desires, knows no satiety. The average man is rich enough when he has a little more than he has got, and not till then. The acquisition and possession of land satisfies this desire in a high degree, since land is a visible and indestructible form of property.

Consequently, as soon as the instincts of the individual are transferred to the group, territorial aggrandis.e.m.e.nt becomes a main preoccupation of the state. This desire was the chief cause of wars, while kings and n.o.bles regarded the territories over which they ruled as their private estates. Wherever despotic or feudal conditions survive, such ideas are likely still to be found, and to cause dangers to other states. The greatest ambition of a modern emperor is still to be commemorated as a 'Mehrer des Reichs.'

Capitalism, by separating the idea of property from any necessary connection with landed estate, and democracy, by denying the whole theory on which dynastic wars of conquest are based, have both contributed to check this, perhaps the worst kind of war. It would, however, be a great error to suppose that the instinct of acquisitiveness, in its old and barbarous form, has lost its hold upon even the most civilised nations. When an old-fas.h.i.+oned brigand appears, and puts himself at the head of his nation, he becomes at once a popular hero. By any rational standard of morality, few greater scoundrels have lived than Frederick the Great and Napoleon I. But they are still names to conjure with. Both were men of singularly lucid intellect and entirely medieval ambitions. Their great achievement was to show how under modern conditions aggressive war may be carried on without much loss (except in human life) to the aggressor. They tore up all the conventions which regulated the conduct of warfare, and reduced it to sheer brigandage and terrorism. And now, after a hundred years, we see these methods deliberately revived by the greatest military power in the world, and applied with the same ruthlessness and with an added pedantry which makes them more inhuman. The perpetrators of the crime calculated quite correctly that they need fear no reluctance on the part of the nation, no qualms of conscience, no compa.s.sionate shrinking, no remorse.

It must, indeed, be a bad cause that cannot count on the support of the large majority of the people at the _beginning_ of a war. Pugnacity, greed, mere excitement, the contagion of a crowd, will fill the streets of almost any capital with a shouting and jubilant mob on the day after a war has been declared.

And yet the motives which we have enumerated are plainly atavistic and pathological. They belong to a mental condition which would conduct an individual to the prison or the gallows. We do not argue seriously whether the career of the highwayman or burglar is legitimate and desirable; and it is impossible to maintain that what is disgraceful for the individual is creditable for the state. And apart from the consideration that predatory patriotism deforms its own idol and makes it hateful in the eyes of the world, subsequent history has fully confirmed the moral instinct of the ancient Greeks, that national insolence or injustice (hybrist) brings its own severe punishment. The imaginary dialogue which Thucydides puts into the mouth of the Athenian and Melian envoys, and the debate in the Athenian a.s.sembly about the punishment of revolted Mitylene, are intended to prepare the reader for the tragic fate of the Sicilian expedition. The same writer describes the break-up of all social morality during the civil war in words which seem to herald the destruction not only of Athens but of Greek freedom.

Machiavelli's 'Prince' shows how history can repeat itself, reiterating its lesson that a nation which gives itself to immoral aggrandis.e.m.e.nt is far on the road to disintegration. Seneca's rebuke to his slave-holding countrymen, 'Can you complain that you have been robbed of the liberty which you have yourselves abolished in your own homes?' applies equally to nations which have enslaved or exploited the inhabitants of subject lands. If the Roman Empire had a long and glorious life, it was because its methods were liberal, by the standard of ancient times. In so far as Rome abused her power, she suffered the doom of all tyrants.

The illusions of imperialism have been made clearer than ever by the course of modern history. Attempts to destroy a nationality by overthrowing its government, proscribing its language, and maltreating its citizens, are never successful. The experiment has been tried with great thoroughness in Poland; and the Poles are now more of a nation than they were under the oppressive feudal system which existed before the part.i.tions. Our own empire would be a ludicrous failure if it were any part of our ambition to Anglicise other races. The only English parts of the empire were waste lands which we have peopled with our own emigrants. We hauled down the French flag in Canada, with the result that Eastern Canada is now the only flouris.h.i.+ng French colony, and the only part of the world where the French race increases rapidly. We have helped the Dutch to multiply with almost equal rapidity in South Africa.

We have added several millions to the native population of Egypt, and over a hundred millions to the population of India. Similarly, the Americans have made Cuba for the first time a really Spanish island, by driving out its incompetent Spanish governors and so attracting immigrants from Spain. On the whole, in imperialism nothing fails like success. If the conqueror oppresses his subjects, they will become fanatical patriots, and sooner or later have their revenge; if he treats them well, and 'governs them for their good,' they will multiply faster than their rulers, till they claim their independence. The Englishman now says, 'I am quite content to have it so'; but that is not the old imperialism.

The notion that frequent war is a healthy tonic for a nation is scarcely tenable. Its dysgenic effect, by eliminating the strongest and healthiest of the population, while leaving the weaklings at home to be the fathers of the next generation, is no new discovery. It has been supported by a succession of men, such as Tenon, Dufau, Foissac, de Lapouge, and Richet in France; Tiedemann and Seeck in Germany; Guerrini in Italy; Kellogg and Starr Jordan in America. The case is indeed overwhelming. The lives destroyed in war are nearly all males, thus disturbing the s.e.x equilibrium of the population; they are in the prime of life, at the age of greatest fecundity; and they are picked from a list out of which from 20 to 30 per cent. have been rejected for physical unfitness. It seems to be proved that the children born in France during the Napoleonic wars were poor and undersized--30 millimetres below the normal height. War combined with religious celibacy to ruin Spain. 'Castile makes men and wastes them,' said a Spanish writer. 'This sublime and terrible phrase sums up the whole of Spanish history.' Schiller was right; 'Immer der Krieg verschlingt die besten.' We in England have suffered from this drain in the past; we shall suffer much more in the next generation.

We have fed our sea for a thousand years, And she calls us, still unfed, Though there's never a wave of all her waves But marks our English dead.

We have strawed our best to the weed's unrest, To the shark and the sheering gull, If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord G.o.d, we ha' paid in full.

Aggressive patriotism is thus condemned by common sense and the verdict of history no less than by morality. We are ent.i.tled to say to the militarists what Socrates said to Polus:

This doctrine of yours has now been examined and found wanting. And this doctrine alone has stood the test--that we ought to be more afraid of doing than of suffering wrong; and that the prime business of every man [and nation] is not to seem good, but to be good, in all private and public dealings.

If the nations would render something more than lip-service to this principle, the abolition of war would be within sight; for, as Ruskin says, echoing the judgment of the Epistle of St. James, 'The first reason for all wars, and for the necessity of national defences, is that the majority of persons, high and low, in all European countries, are thieves.' But it must be remembered that, in spite of the proverb, it takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pa.s.s resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

Our own conversion to pacificism, though sincere, is somewhat recent.

Our literature does not reflect it. Bacon is frankly militarist:

Above all, for empire and greatness, it importeth most, that a nation do profess arms, as their princ.i.p.al honour, study, and occupation. For the things which we formerly have spoken of are but habilitations towards arms; and what is habitation without intention and act?... It is so plain that a man profiteth in that he most intendeth, that it needeth not to be stood upon. It is enough to point at it; that no nation, which doth not directly profess arms, may look to have greatness fall into their mouths.

A state, therefore, 'ought to have those laws or customs, which may reach forth unto them just occasions of war.' Shakespeare's 'Henry V'

has been not unreasonably recommended by the Germans as 'good war-reading.' It would be easy to compile a _catena_ of bellicose maxims from our literature, reaching down to the end of the 19th century. The change is perhaps due less to progress in morality than to that political good sense which has again and again steered our s.h.i.+p through dangerous rocks. But there has been some real advance, in all civilised countries. We do not find that men talked about the 'bankruptcy of Christianity' during the Napoleonic campaigns. Even the Germans think it necessary to tell each other that it was Belgium who began this war.

But, though pugnacity and acquisitiveness have been the real foundation of much miscalled patriotism, better motives are generally mingled with these primitive instincts. It is the subtle blend of n.o.ble and ign.o.ble sentiment which makes patriotism such a difficult problem for the moralist. The patriot nearly always believes, or thinks he believes, that he desires the greatness of his country because his country stands for something intrinsically great and valuable. Where this conviction is absent we cannot speak of patriotism, but only of the cohesion of a wolf-pack. The Greeks, who at last perished because they could not combine, had nevertheless a consciousness that they were the trustees of civilisation against barbarism; and in their day of triumph over the Persians they were filled, for a time, with an almost Jewish awe in presence of the righteous judgment of G.o.d. The 'Persae' of aeschylus is one of the n.o.blest of patriotic poems. The Romans, a harder and coa.r.s.er race, had their ideal of _virtus_ and _gravitas_, which included simplicity of life, dignity and self-restraint, honesty and industry, and devotion to the state. They rightly felt that these qualities const.i.tuted a vocation to empire. There was much harshness and injustice in Roman imperialism; but what n.o.bler epitaph could even the British empire desire than the tribute of Claudian, when the weary t.i.tan was at last stricken and dying:

Haec est, in gremium victos quae sola recepit, humanumque genus communi nomine fovit matris non dominae ritu, civesque vocavit quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit?

Jewish patriotism was of a different kind. A federation of fierce Bedouin tribes, encamped amid hostile populations, and set in the c.o.c.kpit of rival empires against which it was impossible to stand, the Israelites were hammered by misfortune into the most indestructible of all organisms, a theocracy. Their religion was to them what, in a minor degree, Roman Catholicism has been to Ireland and Poland, a consecration of patriotic faith and hope. Westphal says the Jews failed because they hated foreigners more than they loved G.o.d. They have had good reason to hate foreigners. But undoubtedly the effect of their hatred has been that the great gifts which their nation had to give to humanity have come through other hands, and so have evoked no grat.i.tude. In the first century of our era they were called to an almost superhuman abnegation of their inveterate nationalism, and they could not rise to it. As almost every other nation would have done, they chose the lower patriotism instead of the higher; and it was against their will that the religion of civilised humanity grew out of Hebrew soil. But they gained this by their choice, tragic though it was, that they have stood by the graves of all the empires that oppressed them, and have preserved their racial integrity and traditions in the most adverse circ.u.mstances. The history of the Jews also shows that oppression and persecution are far more efficacious in binding a nation together than community of interest and national prosperity. Increase of wealth divides rather than unites a people; but suffering shared in common binds it together with hoops of steel.

The Jews were the only race whose spiritual independence was not crushed by the Roman steam-roller. It would be unfair to say that Rome destroyed nations; for her subjects in the West were barbarous tribes, and in the East she displaced monarchies no less alien to their subjects than her own rule. But she prevented the growth of nationalities, as it is to be feared we have done in India; and the absence of st.u.r.dy independence in the countries round the Mediterranean, especially in the Greek-speaking provinces, made the final downfall inevitable. The lesson has its warning for modern theorists who wish to obliterate the sentiment of nationality, the revival of which, after a long eclipse, has been one of the achievements of modern civilisation. For it was not till long after the destruction of the Western Roman Empire that nationality began to a.s.sume its present importance in Europe.

The transition from medieval to modern history is most strongly marked by the emergence of this principle, with all that it involves. At the end of the Middle Ages Europe was at last compelled to admit that the grand idea of an universal state and an universal church had definitely broken down. Hitherto it had been a.s.sumed that behind all national disputes lay a _ius gentium_ by which all were bound, and that behind all religious questions lay the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, from which there was no appeal. The modern period which certainly does not represent the last word of civilisation, has witnessed the abandonment of these ideas. The change took place gradually. France became a nation when the English raids ceased in the middle of the 15th century. Spain achieved unity a generation later by the union of Castile and Aragon and the expulsion of the Moors from the peninsula. Holland found herself in the heroic struggle against Spain in the 16th century.

But the practice of conducting wars by hiring foreign mercenaries, a sure sign that the nationalist spirit is weak, continued till much later. And the dynastic principle, which is the very negation of nationalism, actually culminated in the 18th century; and this is the true explanation of the feeble resistance which Europe offered to the French revolutionary armies, until Napoleon stirred up the dormant spirit of nationalism in the peoples whom he plundered. 'In the old European system,' says Lord Acton, 'the rights of nationalities were neither recognised by governments nor a.s.serted by the people. The interests of the reigning families, not those of the nations, regulated the frontiers; and the administration was conducted generally without any reference to popular desires.' Marriage or conquest might unite the most diverse nations under one sovereign, such as Charles V.

While such ideas prevailed, the suppression of a nation did not seem hateful; the part.i.tion of Poland evoked few protests at the time, though perhaps few acts of injustice have recoiled with greater force on the heads of their perpetrators than this is likely to do. Poles have been and are among the bitterest enemies of autocracy, and the strongest advocates of republicanism and racialism, in all parts of the world. The French Revolution opened a new era for nationalism, both directly and indirectly. The deposition of the Bourbons was a national act which might be a precedent for other oppressed peoples. And when the Revolution itself began to trample on the rights of other nations, an uprising took place, first in Spain and then in Prussia, which proved too strong for the tyrant. The apostasy of France from her own ideals of liberty proved the futility of mere doctrines, like those of Rousseau, and compelled the peoples to arm themselves and win their freedom by the sword. The national militarism of Prussia was the direct consequence of her humiliation at Jena and Auerstadt, and of the harsh terms imposed upon her at Tilsit. It is true that the Congress of Vienna attempted to revive the old dynastic system. But for the steady opposition of England, the clique of despots might have reimposed the old yoke upon their subjects. The settlement of 1815 also left the entire centre of Europe in a state of chaos; and it was only by slow degrees that Italy and Germany attained national unity. Poland, the Austrian Empire, and the Balkan States still remain in a condition to trouble the peace of the world. In Austria-Hungary the clash of the dynastic and the nationalist ideas is strident; and every citizen of that empire has to choose between a wider and a narrower allegiance.

Europeans are, in fact, far from having made up their minds as to what is the organic whole towards which patriotic sentiment ought to be directed. Socialism agrees with despotism in saying, 'It is the political aggregate, the state,' however much they may differ as to how the state should be administered. For this reason militarism and state-socialism might at any time come to terms. They are at one in exaggerating the 'organic' unity of a political or geographical _enclave_; and they are at one in depreciating the value of individual liberty. Loyalty to 'the state' instead of to 'king and country' is not an easy or a natural emotion. The state is a bloodless abstraction, which as a rule only materialises as a drill-sergeant or a tax-collector. Enthusiasm for it, and not only for what can be got out of it, does not extend much beyond the Fabian Society. Caesarism has the great advantage of a visible head, as well as of its appeal to very old and strong thought-habits; and accordingly, in any national crisis, loyalty to the War-lord is likely to show unexpected strength, and doctrinaire socialism unexpected weakness.

But devotion to the head of the state in his representative capacity is a different thing from the old feudal loyalty. It is far more impersonal; the ruler, whether an individual or a council, is reverenced as a non-human and non-moral embodiment of the national power, a sort of Platonic idea of coercive authority. This kind of loyalty may very easily be carried too far. In reality, we are members of a great many 'social organisms,' each of which has indefeasible claims upon us. Our family, our circle of acquaintance, our business or profession, our church, our country, the comity of civilised nations, humanity at large, are all social organisms; and some of the chief problems of ethics are concerned with the adjustment of their conflicting claims. To make any one of these absolute is destructive of morality. But militarism and socialism deliberately make the state absolute. In internal affairs this may lead to the ruthless oppression of individuals or whole cla.s.ses; in external relations it produces wars waged with 'methods of barbarism.'

The whole idea of the state as an organism, which has been emphasised by social reformers as a theoretical refutation of selfish individualism, rests on the abuse of a metaphor. The bond between the dwellers in the same political area is far less close than that between the organs of a living body. Every man has a life of his own, and some purely personal rights; he has, moreover, moral links with other human a.s.sociations, outside his own country, and important moral duties towards them. No one who reflects on the solidarity of interests among capitalists, among hand-workers, or, in a different way, among scholars and artists, all over the world, can fail to see that the apotheosis of the state, whether in the interest of war or of revolution, is an anachronism and an absurdity.

A very different basis for patriotic sentiment is furnished by the scientific or pseudo-scientific theories about race, which have become very popular in our time. When the history of ideas in the 20th century comes to be written, it is certain that among the causes of this great war will be named the belief of the Germans in the superiority of their own race, based on certain historical and ethnological theories which have acted like a heady wine in stimulating the spirit of aggression among them. The theory, stated briefly, is that the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic are the home of the finest human type that has yet existed, a type distinguished by blond hair, great physical strength, unequalled mental vigour and ability, superior morality, and an innate apt.i.tude for governing and improving inferior races. Unfortunately for the world, this n.o.ble stock cannot flourish for very long in climates unlike its own; but from the earliest historical times it has 'swarmed'

periodically, subjugating the feebler peoples of the south, and elevating them for a time above the level which they were naturally fitted to reach. Wherever we find marked energy and n.o.bleness of character, we may suspect Aryan blood; and history will usually support our surmise. Among the great men who were certainly or probably Germans were Agamemnon, Julius Caesar, the Founder of Christianity, Dante, and Shakespeare. The blond Nordic giant is fulfilling his mission by conquering and imposing his culture upon other races. They ought to be grateful to him for the service, especially as it has a sacrificial aspect, the lower types having, at least in their own climates, greater power of survival.

This fantastic theory has been defended in a large number of German books, of which the 'Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,' by the renegade Englishman Houston Chamberlain, is the most widely known. The objections to it are numerous. It is notorious that until the invention of gunpowder the settled and civilised peoples of Europe were in frequent danger from bands of hardier mountaineers, forest-dwellers, or pastoral nomads, who generally came from the north. But the formidable fighting powers of these marauders were no proof of intrinsic superiority. In fact, the most successful of these conquerors, if success is measured by the amount of territory overrun and subdued, were not the 'great blond beasts' of Nietzsche, but yellow monsters with black hair, the Huns and Tartars.[9] The causes of Tartar ascendancy had not the remotest connection with any moral or intellectual qualities which we can be expected to admire. Nor can the Nordic race, well endowed by nature as it undoubtedly is, prove such a superiority as this theory claims for it. Some of the largest brains yet measured have been those of j.a.panese; and the Jews have probably a higher average of ability than the Teutons. Again, the Germans are not descended from a pure Nordic stock. The Northern type can be best studied in Scandinavia, where the people share with the Irish the distinction of being the handsomest race in the world. The German is a mixture of various anatomical types, including, in some parts, distinct traces of Mongolian blood, which indicate that the raiding Huns meddled, according to their custom, with the German women, and bequeathed to a section of the nation the Turanian cheek-bones, as well as certain moral characteristics.

Lastly, the German race has never shown much apt.i.tude for governing and a.s.similating other peoples. The French, by virtue of their greater sympathy, are far more successful.