Passing of the Great Race — Race, Language and Nationality

V RACE, LANGUAGE AND NATIONALITY

Nationality is an artificial political grouping of population usually centring around a single language as an expression of traditions and aspirations.

Nationality can, however, exist independently of language but states thus formed, such as Belgium or Austria, are far less stable than those where a uniform language is prevalent, as, for example, France or England.

States without a single national language are constantly exposed to disintegration, especially where a substantial minority of the inhabitants speak a tongue which is predominant in an adjoining state and, as a consequence, tend to gravitate toward such state.

The history of the last century in Europe has been the record of a long series of struggles to unite in one political unit all those speaking the same or closely allied dialects.

With the exception of internal and social revolutions, every European war since the Napoleonic period has been caused by the effort to bring about the unification either of Italy or of Germany or by the desperate attempts of the Balkan States to struggle out of Turkish chaos into modern European nations on a basis of community of language.

The unification of both Italy and Germany is as yet incomplete according to the views held by their more advanced patriots and the solution of the Balkan question is still in the future.

Men are keenly aware of their nationality and are very sensitive about their language, but only in a few cases, notably in Sweden and Germany, does any large section of the population possess anything analogous to true race consciousness, although the term “race” is everywhere misused to designate linguistic or political groups.

The unifying power of a common language works subtly and unceasingly.

In the long run it forms a bond which draws peoples together—as the English-speaking peoples of the British Empire with those of America.

In the same manner this linguistic sympathy will bring the German-speaking Austrians into a closer political community with the rest of Germany and will hold together all the German-speaking provinces.

It sometimes happens that a section of the population of a large nation gathers around language, reinforced by religion, as an expression of individuality.

The struggle between the French-speaking Alpine Walloons and the Nordic Flemings of Low Dutch tongue in Belgium is an example of two competing languages in an artificial nation which was formed originally around religion.

On the other hand, the Irish National movement centres chiefly around religion reinforced by myths of ancient grandeur.

The French Canadians and the Poles use both religion and language to hold together what they consider a political unit.

None of these so-called nationalities are founded on race.

During the past century side by side with the tendency to form imperial or large national groups, such as the Pan-Germanic, Pan-Slavic, Pan-Rumanian or Italia Irredenta movements, there has appeared a counter movement on the part of small disintegrating “nationalities” to reassert themselves, such as the Bohemian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Irish, and Egyptian national revivals.

The upheaval is usually caused, as in the cases of the Irish and the Serbians, by delusions of former greatness now become national obsessions, but sometimes it means the resistance of a small group of higher culture to absorption by a lower civilization.

The reassertion of these small nationalities is associated with the resurgence of the lower races at the expense of the Nordics.

Examples of a high type threatened by a lower culture are afforded by the Finlanders, who are trying to escape the dire fate of their neighbors across the Gulf of Finland—the Russification of the Germans and Swedes of the Baltic Provinces—and by the struggle of the Danes of Schleswig to escape Germanization.

The Armenians, too, have resisted stoutly the pressure of Islam to force them away from their ancient Christian faith.

This people really represents the last outpost of Europe toward the Mohammedan East and constitutes the best remaining medium through which Western ideals and culture can be introduced into Asia.

In these as in other cases, the process of absorption from the viewpoint of the world at large is good or evil exactly in proportion to the relative value of the culture and race of the two groups.

The world would be no richer in civilization with an independent Bohemia or an enlarged Rumania; but, on the contrary, an independent Hungarian nation strong enough to stand alone, a Finland self-governing or reunited to Sweden, or an enlarged Greece would add greatly to the forces that make for good government and progress.

An independent Ireland worked out on a Tammany model is not a pleasing prospect.

A free Poland, apart from its value as a buffer state, might be actually a step backward.

Poland was once great, but the elements that made it so are scattered and gone and the Poland of to-day is a geographical expression and nothing more.

The prevailing lack of true race consciousness is probably due to the fact that every important nation in Europe as at present organized, with the sole exception of the Iberian and Scandinavian states, possesses in large proportions representatives of at least two of the fundamental European subspecies of man and of all manner of crosses between them.

In France to-day, as in Cæsar’s Gaul, the three races divide the nation in unequal proportions.

In the future, however, with an increased knowledge of the correct definition of true human races and types and with a recognition of the immutability of fundamental racial characters and of the results of mixed breeding, far more value will be attached to racial in contrast to national or linguistic affinities.

In marital relations the consciousness of race will also play a much larger part than at present, although in the social sphere we shall have to contend with a certain strange attraction for contrasted types.

When it becomes thoroughly understood that the children of mixed marriages between contrasted races belong to the lower type, the importance of transmitting in unimpaired purity the blood inheritance of ages will be appreciated at its full value and to bring half-breeds into the world will be regarded as a social and racial crime of the first magnitude.

The laws against miscegenation must be greatly extended if the higher races are to be maintained.

The language that a man speaks may be nothing more than evidence that at some time in the past his race has been in contact, either as conqueror or as conquered, with its original possessors.

Postulating the Nordic origin and dissemination of the Proto-Aryan language, then in Asia and elsewhere existing Aryan speech on the lips of populations showing no sign of Nordic characters is to be considered evidence of a former dominance of Nordics now long vanished.

One has only to consider the spread of the language of Rome over the vast extent of her Empire to realize how few of those who speak to-day Romance tongues derive any portion of their blood from the pure Latin stock and the error of talking about a “Latin race” becomes evident.

There is, however, such a thing as a large group of nations which have a mutual understanding and sympathy based on the possession of a common or closely related group of languages and on the culture of which it is the medium.

This assemblage maybe called the “Latin nations,” but never the “Latin race.

” “Latin America” is a still greater misnomer as the great mass of the populations of South and Central America is not even European and still less “Latin,” being overwhelmingly of Amerindian blood.

In the Teutonic group a large majority of those who speak Teutonic languages, as the English, Flemings, Dutch, North Germans and Scandinavians, are descendants of the Nordic race while the dominant class in Europe is everywhere of that blood.

As to the so-called “Celtic race,” the fantastic inapplicability of the term is at once apparent when we consider that those populations on the borders of the Atlantic Ocean, who to-day speak Celtic dialects, are divided into three groups, each one showing in great purity the characters of one of the three entirely distinct human subspecies found in Europe.

To class together the Breton peasant with his round Alpine skull; the little, long skulled, brunet Welshman of Mediterranean race, and the tall, blond, light-eyed Scottish Highlander of pure Nordic blood, in a single group labelled Celtic is obviously impossible.

These peoples have neither physical, mental nor cultural characteristics in common.

If one be of “Celtic” blood then the other two are clearly of different origin.

There was once a people who used the original Celtic language and they formed the western vanguard of the Nordic race.

This people was spread all over central and western Europe prior to the irruption of the Teutonic tribes and were, no doubt, much mixed with Alpines among the lower classes.

The descendants of these Celts must be sought to-day among those having the characters of the Nordic race and not elsewhere.

In England the short, dark Mediterranean Welshman talks about being “Celtic,” quite unconscious that he is the residuum of Pre-Nordic races of immense antiquity.

If the Celts are Mediterranean in race then they are absent from central Europe and we must regard as Celts all the Berbers and Egyptians, as well as many Persians and Hindus.

In France many anthropologists regard the Breton of Alpine blood in the same light and ignore his remote Asiatic origin.

If these Alpine Bretons are Celts then there is no substantial trace of their blood, in the British Isles, as round skulls are practically absent there and all the blond elements in England, Scotland and Ireland must be attributed to the historic Teutonic invasions.

Furthermore, we must call all the continental Alpines “Celts,” and must also include all Slavs, Armenians and other brachycephs of western Asia within that designation, which would be obviously grotesque.

The fact that the original Celts left their speech on the tongues of Mediterraneans in Wales and of Alpines in Brittany must not mislead us, as it indicates nothing more than that Celtic speech antedates the Anglo-Saxons in England and the Romans in France.

We must once and for all time discard the name “Celt” for any existing race whatever and speak only of “Celtic” language and culture.

In Ireland the big, blond Nordic Danes claim the honor of the name of “Celt,” if honor it be, but they are fully as Nordic as the English and the great mass of the Irish are of Danish, Norse and Anglo-Norman blood in addition to earlier and Pre-Nordic elements.

We are all familiar with the blond and the brunet type of Irishman.

These represent precisely the same racial elements as those which enter into the composition of the English, namely, the tall Nordic blond and the little Mediterranean brunet pure or combined with Paleolithic remnants.

The Irish are consequently not entitled to independent national existence on the ground of race, but if there be any ground for political separation from England it must rest like that of Belgium on religion, a basis for political combinations now happily obsolete in communities well advanced in culture.

In the case of the so-called “Slavic race,” there is much more unity between racial type and language.

It is true that in most Slavic-speaking countries the predominant race is clearly Alpine, except perhaps in Russia where there is a very large substratum of Nordic type—which may be considered as Proto-Nordic.

The objection which is made to the identification of the Slavic race with the Alpine type rests chiefly on the fact that a very large portion of the Alpine race is German-speaking in Germany, Italian-speaking in Italy and French-speaking in central France.

Moreover, large portions of Rumania are of exactly the same racial complexion.

Many of the modern Greeks are also Alpines; in fact, are little more than Byzantinized Slavs.

It was through the Byzantine Empire that the Slavs first came in contact with the Mediterranean world and through this Greek medium the Russians, the Serbians, the Rumanians and the Bulgarians received their Christianity.

Situated on the eastern marches of Europe, the Slavs were submerged during long periods in the Middle Ages by Mongolian hordes and were checked in development and warped in culture.

Definite traces remain of the blood of the Mongols both in isolated and compact groups in south Russia and also scattered throughout the whole country as far west as the German boundary.

The high tide of the Mongol invasion was during the thirteenth century.

Three hundred years later the great Muscovite expansion began, first over the steppes to the Urals and then across Siberian tundras and forests to the waters of the Pacific, taking up in its course much Mongolian blood, especially during the early stages of its advance.

The term “Caucasian race” has ceased to have any meaning except where it is used, in the United States, to contrast white populations with Negroes or Indians or in the Old World with Mongols.

It is, however, a convenient term to include the three European subspecies when considered as divisions of one of the primary branches or species of mankind but it is, at best, a cumbersome and archaic designation.

The name “Caucasian” arose a century ago from a false assumption that the cradle of the blond Europeans was in the Caucasus where no traces are now found of any such race, except a small and decreasing minority of blond traits among the Ossetes, a tribe whose Aryan speech is related to that of the Armenians, and who while mainly brachycephalic still retain some blond and dolichocephalic elements which apparently are fading fast.

The Ossetes now have about thirty per cent fair eyes and ten per cent fair hair.

They are supposed to be to some extent a remnant of the Alans, the easternmost Teutonic tribe and closely related to the Goths.

Both Alans and Goths very early in the Christian era occupied southern Russia, and were the latest known Nordics in the vicinity of the Caucasus Mountains.

If these Ossetes are not partly of Alan origin they may possibly represent the last lingering trace of ancient Scythian dolichocephalic blondness.

The phrase “Indo-European or Indo-Germanic race” is also of little use.

If it has any meaning at all it must include all the three European races as well as members of the Mediterranean race in Persia and India.

The use of this name also involves a false assumption of blood relationship between the north European populations and the Hindus, because of their possession in common of Aryan speech.

The name “Aryan race” must also be frankly discarded as a term of racial significance.

It is to-day purely linguistic, although there was at one time, of course, an identity between the original Proto-Aryan mother tongue and the race that first spoke and developed it.

In short, there is not nor has there ever been either a Caucasian or an Indo-European race, but there was once, thousands of years ago, an original Aryan race long since vanished into dim memories of the past.

If used in a racial sense other than as above, it should be limited to the Nordic invaders of Hindustan now long extinct.

The great lapse of time since the disappearance of the ancient Aryan race as such is measured by the extreme disintegration of the various groups of Aryan languages.

These linguistic divergences are chiefly due to the imposition by conquest of Aryan speech upon several distinct subspecies of man throughout western Asia and Europe.

It may be pertinent before leaving this subject to point out that, as a whole, “Germans,” “French,” and “English,” as certain populations are now called, are but little more entitled to be considered the direct descendants, or even the exclusive modern representatives, of the ancient Germans, Franks or Anglo-Saxons, than are the living Italians or Greeks to be regarded as the offspring of the Romans of the days of the Republic or the Hellenes of the classic period.

There are, of course, many individuals and groups, perhaps even classes, in each of these nations, who do accurately represent the race from which the national name was derived.

The Scandinavians, on the other hand, are racially what they were two thousand years ago, though diminished somewhat in race vigor by the loss through the emigration of some of their more enterprising members.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Europe, the modern Spaniard probably more closely represents the Iberians before the arrival of the Gauls than did the Spaniard of five hundred years ago.