The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1898-06-20
A LONG CONFLICT.

War-Two, Great Revivals of the
| Latin PoWer-General Decline of Lat
| in Influence.
Leaving out of consideration the par
| ticular phases of the subject which
most concern our own country, the war
between the United States and Spain is
only one incident in the contest be-
tween the Germanic and the Latin
| races, contest which has been going
on for more than twenty centuries, a
contest in which wars and battles,
strife for commerce and business, eff
forts to found and maintain colonies,
political struggles and entanglements
are all but incidents. Almost from
the time authentic history began, the
Teuton and the Latin have been en-
gagged in a struggle for supremacy, too
frequently taking the form of war. 1t
| is a struggle which was forced upon
both by their proximity in Europe, a
| struggle which neither Stunned and
| which, after every round found the
| Teuton a little stronger and Latin a
| little weaker.
| Germany has always been a human
| beehive. From the northern center of
| Europe swarnls of nations have issued
| in every direction to people new quar-
| tiers of the earth, to conquer territory
| Which the weakened hands of a degrad-
ed civilization could not hold; to seek
| other lands and there plant the seeds
/ of future nations. Among the earliest
| records of the Latin race are stories of
| invasion by German hosts, of the ter
ror of German arms, for in the army of
Il ho ,,ajn
and the tide of German invasion rolled
! on into Greece and even into Asia Mi
nor, for the Galatia, to whose church
Paul wrote one of his most stirring
epistles, was so called because of the
Gauls, who settled in the province and
even to this day remain distinct from
the Asiatic populations, by whom they
are surrounded.
Even in the time of julius Caesar
| there was a considerable admixture of
the Teutonic element among the people
of Gaul, indeed, a third part of Caesars
province was inhabited by men who In
all essential particulars We're Teutons.
The passage Of the Rhine and the in
vasion of Germany by the great COM
| mander were the first aggressive steps
Rome took against the Teutonic hosts
of the north. Up to that time the re-
public had contented itself with re-
sisting German invasion. Roman
statesmen long before the days Of Taci-
tus, recognized the "barbarians' or
bearded men, of the north as a men,
ace to the state, and the treatise Of
| Tacitus seems to have been written
with view to informing his fellow-cit-
| liens of the kind of people who lived
beyond the Rhine and thus putting the
Romans on their guard against enemies
| who might prove exceedingly formida-
/ BILE. Caesar determined to remove the
menace to the state by conquering the
Germans. His effort.was failure, for
/ he never succeeded in obtaining more
] than nominal control of the nations be-
yond the Rhine, and the humiliation of
the army Of Varus, fifty years after,
put an end forever to the attempts of
the Romans to conquer the blonde
| warriors of the German forests. A CEN
fury later all thought of making any
attempt at the conquest of Germany
was abandoned and Trajan and Probus
built long walls, high and strong, with
forts at frequent intervals, and manned
them with good men and true to keep
out the German hosts. Even strong
walls are no defence to a degenerate
state, the Germans took the aggressive
and what are called the barbarian in
vasions of Rome We're really the
swarming of the German tribes be-
come too numerous for their native SOIL
over into territory the men of which
We're too weak to hold their own.
1t is customary among historians,
Iitrin ,tCt. IN
the downfall of the Roman empire as
one of the great catastrophes of histo-
nv, but the fact is overlooked that the
Roman people had become morally and
physically vile beyond description; de-
generate, weak of body, with cores
ponding decay of intellect, they could
not compare either In military strength
or social virtue with the sturdy, hardy
races of the north, the empire fell be-
cause it did not deserve to live, and in
| it's stead arose group of nations, tte
men of which We're as far superior to
the Romans as the latter had been to
the enervated populations of Greece,
Asia Minor and Egypt. The Goths, the
/ Visigoths, the Alemanni, the Ostro-
/ goths, the Suevi, who established their
political supremacy in Spain, in Italy,
in Greece, We're Teutonic or of Teutonic
origin, and thus when the great empire
crumbled into decay the political as
tendency of the Teuton was established
from the Mediterranean to the North
sea- 1t was still further extend I'd by
the invasion of the British isles by the
Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who were
destined to found two empires which
seem even yet only in their youth; one,
the empire of Great Britain, the other
its sister country, the empire of the
United States. The Teutonic conquest
of the north was permanent, that of
the south was temporary, for in the
course of a few generations the native
populations of Spain, France and Italy
re-asserted themselves, not in military,
but in a social way, the intermarriages
of the conquerors with the people prac-
tically reduced the dominant race to
the level of the people it governed and
through amalgamation the Teutonic ell
ement almost disappeared.
It's influence, however, was felt in a
marked degree in the political affairs of
central and southern Europe, for what
is known. in history as the Holy Ro-
man empire was a Teutonic empire,
whose mobiles were TeutonS and the