geneous, ethnic group of Germans, 70,000,000 strong. Because of the enormities of the past four and a half years, this group cannot be trusted until they have shown repentance not of a few days or months, but by a generation or more of decent action.

The nascent Slavic republics of Czecho-Slovakia (see page 489), Poland (see page 499), and possibly Lithuania (see page 465), to the east of the Germans, and of Jugo-Slavia (see page 485), on the south, could easily be honeycombed with discontent and mutual jealousies by the scheming junker class of Prussians Thereby would be created in the heart of Europe another political volcano always in eruption, closely analogous to that which kept the Balkans in continual convulsion prior to the world war. Unless from the Germans are exacted such guarantees of good conduct as can neither be escaped nor evaded, the world is handing over these enfranchised races to become the ultimate prey of men who are bound neither by justice, nor honor, nor mercy in their dealings with mankind.

In the German group specially prominent are the Prussians, the Bavarians, the Saxons, and the three Free Towns of Lübeck, Hamburg, and Bremen.

The Free Towns were the largest factor in the spread of German influence during the Middle Ages. These three associated with themselves for mutual protection ninety of the principal commercial cities between the Rhine and Novgorod. This association, called the Hanseatic League, or League of the Guilds, from 1241 for more than four hundred years defended the rights of trade and was supreme in northern Europe. Under normal conditions the maritime and commercial interests of Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg are immense. The citizens, proud of their self-governing traditions, are democratic in sentiment.

The Saxons are of almost pure Teutonic stock, with slight Slavic admixture. They occupy one of the most fertile regions of Germany. Formerly they were renowned for their independent spirit. For thirty-three years they stubbornly fought against Charlemagne, who finally conquered and Christianized them. During the nineteenth century they constantly progressed in constitutional liberty until the Prussians occupied their territory in 1866. They rank among the most highly educated people of Europe. Dresden, their capital, is a center of art and industry. More than 95 per cent of the Saxons are Protestant.

THE BAVARIANS

The Bavarians are racially the most composite people of Germany, being descended from Germanized Slavs, earlier Celtic settlers, and Teutonic Marcomanni and Quadi. The latter entered the country from the east and were called Baivarii, probably from Bojer, as they had come via Bojerland or Bohemia.

They inhabit an immense amphitheater, about 220 miles long and 110 miles broad, surrounded by lofty mountains. No other territory of

equal size in Germany is enclosed by natural boundaries so distinct; consequently the Bavarians have developed a character of their own. Physically they are darker, smallerboned, more natural, and less stiff than Germans generally. They are conservative, religious, and affable.

The Passion Play has been rendered every ten years since 1634 by the Bavarian peasants of Oberammergau. Sovereigns and people have fostered music and the drama, and their capital, Munich, is a school of all the arts. The bronze doors of the Capitol in Washington were cast in a Bavarian foundry. Count Rumford, philanthropist and man of science, born in Woburn, Mass., and for eleven years Bavarian Minister of War and Police, reorganized labor and reformed social conditions.

Always hostile to Prussia, the Bavarians since their subjection in 1866 have of necessity sullenly submitted to Prussian control. Religious differences intensify the separation, seven-tenths of the 6,000,000 Bavarians being Roman Catholics.

THE PRUSSIANS *

The Prussians derive their name and origin from the Borussi, a fierce, large-boned people, kindred of the Lithuanians and Letts (see pages 464-465), living in the tenth century on the lowlands of the Oder, Vistula, and Niemen. Almost exterminated by the Teutonic Knights, the survivors besought the intervention of Poland, which annexed those west of the Vistula. In 1525 Albert of Hohenzollern, grand master of the Knights, declared himself a Protestant and surrendered his lands to the King of Poland, who thereupon created Prussia a Grand Duchy and made him Grand Duke. His remote descendant, Frederick, having bought the title of king from the emperor at a great price, with extraordinary pomp at Königsburg, where he was born, crowned himself King of Prussia, January 18, 1701.

The Prussians, though completely Germanized, always differed from and were disliked and mistrusted by the other Germans. Von Treitschke says of Prussia, "from its beginning the most hated of German States." Goethe wrote, "The Prussian was always a brute and civilization will make him ferocious." The Prussians have always manifested peculiar traits, possibly derived from their common ancestors, the merciless Knights and the fierce Borussi.

At accession Frederick possessed a kingdom of 40,000 square miles and 1,500,000 inhabitants. A year ago Prussia comprised 140,000 square miles and 40,000,000 inhabitants.

This surprising result was accomplished by a continuous, consistent policy of employing duplicity, violence, or any infamous means to acquire territory and people. While the name

*See also, in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, "Prussianism," by Secretary of State Robert Lansing, and "Germany's Dream of World Domination" (June, 1918).

Prussian is applied to all Prussian subjects, the great majority belong to States spoliated or destroyed.

This system was endured and favored as long as attended by the glamour of foreign military success. In the wars with Denmark, Austria-Hungary, and France, it intoxicated by triumphs, electric in rapidity. But the first great disaster was sure to hurl it to the ground amid the awakened scorn and detestation of the German people. The political delirium now sweeping over Germany is manifestation of this awakening.

SLAVIC TRIBES IN GERMANY Slavic tribes, formerly scattered through Germany as far as the Elbe, have been almost entirely absorbed into the German population.

The Polabs, once numerous, were probably

the last to disappear. The district in eastern Hanover, where their language was spoken as late as the seventeenth century, is still called Wend.

In Lusatia, the name derived from the Slav tribe Lusitzi, now belonging to Saxony and Prussia, there are about 170,000 Sorbs, or Wends. In most difficult circumstances they have resolutely retained their language and customs in the midst of a German population eight times their number. Forgotten by the world and gradually becoming Germanized, they were vitalized by a remarkable nationalistic awakening at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Ill-treated in Prussia, they have been favored in Saxony, where their capital, Bautzen, is an intellectual center. Their language is intermediate between Polish and Czech.

THE SCANDINAVIANS*

The Scandinavians, or the Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes, Teutonic peoples, are so intimately related in race and history that, except with frequent repetition, it would be impossible to discuss them separately. Scandinavian is a term of unknown origin and meaning, long used to include them all.

The vast, elongated northern peninsula between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Atlantic doubles in breadth towards the south and biforks as if to admit the peninsula of Denmark between its extremities.

West Denmark and Norway look outward upon the ocean, whose shores the Scandinavians were to harry and conquer. East Denmark and Sweden look inward upon the Baltic and Europe. They planted settlers north of the Gulf of Finland, and east of the Gulf of Bothnia, and placed a Varangian Prince on the Russian throne (see page 457).

From the human hive of Sweden, the Goths swarmed to Germany and southern Russia and thence to Italy and Spain, leaving their name everywhere in Sweden, as at Gothenburg and in the fabulously rich Gotland, where "the women spun with distaffs of gold" (pp. 453-4).

In like manner, from overcrowded Norway great waves of emigration flowed to the plains of the Rhine and Elbe. The ocean, however, opened larger opportunity. Romance attaches to raids by sea, and the term viking has a lordly sound. But viking, from an old Norse word, means freebooter, or pirate; and nothing more than pirates the heathen vikings were; brave, looting, kidnapping, burning, and then fleeing in their high-pointed galleys. For two centuries they were the curse of the British Islands and of France. Then they began to remain on the lands they had ravaged and to resist later pirates like themselves.

The Norwegians today inherit all the bravery and sea skill of the vikings, without their barbarism and cruelty. In 1913 they had a larger tonnage of merchant shipping than any other country except Great Britain, the United States and Germany. The Scandinavian immigrants into the United States have been numerous and welcome.

In 1864 Prussia seized the Danish provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, thus appropriating over seven thousand square miles of territory and a million and a half people.

In the Kingdom of Denmark, in 1918, there were about 3,000,000 inhabitants. Denmark possesses Greenland and Iceland. Norway had about 2,400,000 inhabitants in 1910; Sweden, 5,758,000 in 1916.

The great majority of the Scandinavians are fair-haired, blue-eyed, light-complexioned and long-headed. In general the Norwegians and Danes are democratic; the Swedes less so.

Christianity was definitely established among *See also, in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, "In Beautiful Delecarlia," by Lillian Gore (May, 1909).

the three nations in the eleventh century after obstinate resistance by the natives. All are now intensely Protestant.

The ancient Scandinavians had a common Teutonic language known as Donsh Tunga, called by the Norwegians Old Norsk. This the Norwegians, who settled in Iceland in the tenth century, carried with them. Into Norway four centuries later Queen Margaret introduced Danish, and Norsk or Norse is now used only by the peasantry. But in Iceland the old tongue survives in purity. Danish, spoken with strong Norwegian accent, is readily understood in Sweden, and Swedish, with greater difficulty, by the Danes.

Thorwaldsen, the sculptor, and Hans Christian Anderson, author of the fairy tales, were Danes; Ole Bull, the violinist; the explorer, Nansen, and Amundsen, the discoverer of the South Pole, Norwegians; Frederika Bremer, the authoress; Jenny Lind, the "Swedish Nightingale," and Linnæus, father of botany, Swedes.

The three nations, though sometimes under one sovereign, have often fought one another, Norway in heart if not in arms generally on the side of Denmark. Now the three are not unfriendly. None the less, songs and plays, rehearsing victories over the Danes, are always popular in Swedish theaters.

THE DUTCH*

This name, formerly comprehensive of all the Germans and from all its etymology signifying popular or national, is now applied in English only to the people and language of the Netherlands.

Their country being below sea-level, they wrested the land from the ocean by dikes. In the sixteenth century they defeated Philip II of Spain while at the height of his power. In the seventeenth century they checked the theretofore victorious career of Louis XIV and contended on equal terms with England for the mastery of the seas. Such achievements by a people numerically weak attracted the attention of Europe and in England made the Netherlanders preeminently the Dutch.

They were the first people to afford an asylum for free thought. People, elsewhere ostracised, betook themselves to Amsterdam or Rotterdam as later to London or Geneva. Our Pilgrim Fathers, persecuted at home, found refuge in the Netherlands for twelve years before sailing for the New World in the Mayflower.

The long conflict with Philip II revealed and intensified the character of the people. All the Netherlanders were equal in love of liberty. But the northern provinces were agricultural

* See also, in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, "Holland as Seen from a Dutch Window," by James Howard Gore (September, 1908); "Glimpses of Holland," by William Wisner Chapin (January, 1915), and "The City of Jacqueline," by Florence Craig Albrecht (January, 1915).

Many of the twenty-five divisions of the German Empire were in turn subdivided. For example, while the major portion of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg is washed by the waters of the North Sea, a very considerabie detached fragment of its territory is to be found northeast of Lorraine and northwest of Bavaria, while a third portion adjoins Lubeck, on the Baltic. Bits of Prussia were scattered throughout the other kingdoms, duchies, and principalities irritating fragments in the body politic The whole empire was a political crazy-anile

and Protestant and all spoke Flemish or Frisian. The southern provinces were industrial and Roman Catholic and a large proportion of the people spoke French. These conflicting interests resulted in separation. The northern became the States General of Holland. The southern remained under Spanish or Austrian rule until the French Revolution. Forced together on the fall of Napoleon, the southern or Belgian provinces broke away in 1830 and formed themselves into the kingdom of Belgium.

There were in 1916 about 6,600,000 Dutch. The old Frisian element is still strong in the north, though partly assimilated by the predominant Dutch. Despite the influx of foreigners, the character of the people and the racial stock have been little modified. Hugo Grotius, the father of international law, and Erasmus were Dutch.

The Netherlands had a prominent share in discovery and in the settlement of the New World. New York was long the province of New Netherlands; the city was New Amsterdam. Dutch influence was one of the strongest factors in shaping American political institutions. Two Presidents of the United States were of Dutch ancestry.

THE SWISS*

The Swiss of today present a more interesting subject of study than does the unsolved problem of their remote ancestors, and of the Occupants of the pile dwellings in their lakes. They are the direct descendants of the Latinized Celtic Helvetii, of the warlike Alemanni who pushed into their mountains from the north, of Burgundians coming from the west after sojourn in France, of Rhætii on the east and of Italians fleeing from the south. versity and tolerance were their characteristics from the first. It was the "Men" of Uri, the "Community" of Schwytz and the "Association", of Unter-Walden who drew up in Latin their "Everlasting League" in 1291.

Di

The story of William Tell and the Oath of Rutli, though they disappear from authentic history, are instinct with the spirit which won "the small battles of immortal memory," Morgarten, Sembach, Næfels, Morat, Keppel, and innumerable more. Zurich and Geneva have since been centers of culture, but the three Forest Cantons are the synonyms of heroism and liberty.

The Cantons have slowly increased from three before 1300, ten before 1500, all in the valley of the Aar, to the present twenty-two. Valais, Neuchatel and Geneva in 1815 were the last additions.

See also, in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, "In Valais," by Louise Murray (March, 1910); "A Woman's Climbs in the High Alps," by Dora Keen (July, 1911); "Mont Blanc and the Swiss Alps," by W. W. Hyde (August, 1913), and "The Citizen Army of Switzerland" (November, 1915).

Fifty-seven per cent of the inhabitants are Protestants and forty-three per cent Roman Catholic. Seventy per cent are German-speaking, twenty-two per cent French-speaking, nearly seven per cent Italian, and slightly over one per cent Romansch, all equally Swiss. In the Canton of Grisons, and nowhere else, Ladin is spoken, "a laggard sister of French and Italian." German, French and Italian are equally official languages. Of the 3,880,000 inhabitants, 550.000 are foreign residents. The area of Switzerland is about the same as that of Maryland and Delaware united.

Adjustment of cantonal, individual, and racial interests has not been easy. The Swiss, until within the last seventy years, have experienced internal dissensions and civil war. But the goal of a well-nigh perfect union has been reached.

Their "twenty-two small States, differing from each other in nearly every point, religious, political, social, industrial, physical, and linguistic," constitute a federal republic which in maintenance of public welfare, individual rights and general harmony is unsurpassed among the political creations of all time.

THE ITALIANS*

One of the marvels of human history is the extraordinary Italian race that for 2,000 years has blessed the world with one succession of geniuses-inventors, musicians, authors, creators of inspiration and advancement-from which all other peoples have benefited.

The Italians, like the Americans, are a most composite people. Nowhere else in Europe have so many foreign elements fused with the native element to produce a modern nation. Successive fusion was the practice at Rome from the time the city comprised hardly more than the Palatine Hill, even down to the time it became a world empire. Since then circumstances rather than a basic principle have determined fusion.

Roman citizens were the direct ancestors of the Italians. But not they alone. At the time of Christ very many of the inhabitants of Italy were slaves. They were the strongest, most perfect physically, and most capable from among the peoples the Romans subdued.

*See also, in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MagaZINE, "Austro-Italian Mountain Frontiers" (April, 1915); "Frontier Cities of Italy," by Florence Craig Albrecht (June, 1915); "Italy, the Gifted Mother of Civilization," by Arthur Stanley Riggs (October, 1916); “Our Littlest Ally" (San Marino), by Alice Rohe (August, 1918); "Little Known Sardinia," by Helen Dunstan Wright (August, 1916); “A Country Where Going to America Is an Industry" (Sicily), by Arthur H. Warner (December, 1909); "Gems of the Italian Lakes," by A. E. Mayer (August, 1913), and "The Battle-field of Nations and of Nature" (Sicily), by Mrs. George C. Bosson, Jr. (January, 1909).