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It is not too much to say that, without these, any higher progress was, and always will be, impossible. In short, the Roman and Grecian races had become impotent and decrepit. The high destiny of man lay not with them, but with the younger race, for whom all earlier civilizations had but prepared the way. Who were these Teutons?
Such a vessel of inspiration was the powerful north express as it thundered over the sleeping plains of Germany and France on its night journey from Cologne to Paris. A thing of possibilities indeed, with its varying human freight stolid Teutons, hard-headed Scandinavians, Slavs whom expediency or caprice had forced to descend upon Paris across the sea of ice.
Much, perhaps the fate of Europe, depended on whether they would remain neutral or throw in their lot with the Teutons. They chose the former alternative and literally saved the situation. The question of motive is wholly irrelevant. Later on they were urged to move a step farther and take an active part against their former allies.
By the time of the great invasions of the fifth century, local political life had gone far towards extinction throughout Roman Europe, and the tribal organization of the Teutons prevailed in the struggle simply because it had come to be politically stronger than any organization that was left to oppose it.
Did Jurand perchance tell you any thing? Because, you see, here is Jurand's letter, by the hand of the priest Kaleb, and his seal, and in this letter Jurand says that he knows that it was not the Teutons. What did he tell you?" "He said that it was not the Teutons." "How then can you risk your life and appeal to the judgment of God?"
To these must be added a certain mental shapelessness which can expand or contract without reference to reason or record; a potential infinity of excuses. If the English had been on the German side, the German professors would have noted what irresistible energies had evolved the Teutons.
For it is the Teutons who would in the Great War, like the Crusaders of old, pass down this highway and again conquer the East, though in this case their object is trade, and not the Holy Sepulcher. To secure the pathway through this strategic country it also is necessary to have control of the territory on all sides, and this is quite as true in a political as in a military sense.
It is probable that the religion of the common progenitors of the Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Teutons, and Slavs, in their hard and sterile home in Central Asia, was a worship of the powers of Nature verging toward pantheism, although the earliest of the Vedas representing the ancient faith seem to recognize a supreme power and intelligence God as the common father of the race, to whom prayers and sacrifices were devoutly offered.
In the meanwhile, the Teutons, despite their striking inferiority in numbers and resources, have kept the Great Powers of the world at bay, have defeated their armies, sunk their mercantile marine, occupied their territory, drained their wealth, paralysed their trade and deprived them of all the odds which they owed to circumstance.
As the English are on the other side, the German professors will say that these Teutons were not sufficiently evolved. Or they will say that they were just sufficiently evolved to show that they were not Teutons. Probably they will say both. But the truth is that all that they call evolution should rather be called evasion.
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