Evening star., 1939-04-02


Teuton-of tall, blue-eyed, narrow
headed Nordic and medium -statured,
broad-headed Alpine-for the mastery of
| Central Europe.
Perhaps 10000 years ago the great ice
| sheets started moving northward over
| the continent which they had made des-
| olate. The mammals and men of the
| ice age went with them or perished.
Forests and pleasant meadows and blue
lakes and a new race of men migrated
northward and westward. These were
the men of the later epochs of the New
Stone Age-artisans in flint, primitive
farmers, domesticators of few animals.
They spread over a great deal of the
land, including France, Germany, Rus
sia and the Danubian countries. They
constituted scanty population-wraith-
like figures passing in the fogs of his
torys dawn.
Then, ten milleniums or more ago, a
great wave out of the East swept over
them--tribe after tribe out of the South
Russian steppes, speaking many dia-
lects of a common language. They
overwhelmed and swallowed the men of
the New Stone Age, ever moving west
ward and northward. Other bands of
them moved southeastward, through the
Afghanistan passes into India. They
called themselves "Aarya," "the masters"
Other bands of them spread southwark
into Greece and around the Mediter-
ranean, where they subjugated and alb
sorbed-or in some cases were absorbed
blythe small, narrow headed, dark
skinned peoples they found in their way.
Other bands pushed straight across
Europe to the Atlantic and to the Brit
ish Isles They called themselves some
etvmologists believe, although the deri-
vation is quite uncertain. "Eire" or "1re"
the name preserved by the present
Irish Republic.
Others Moved Northward.
Still other bands, probably late comers
and differing in fundamental respects
from those who had gone before, moved
northwestward into Northern Germany,
the Danish Peninsula lately built by the
retreating glaciers and the Scandina-
Wan lands where the ice still fingered
cold, gloomy, foggy habitat. Sometime
before there had spread westward on
the heels of the Celts, or the Fire, dl-
vision of these Caspian peoples who were
in some respects the most remarkable
of all. They were the "Slavs'-"the
glorious" etymologists think the word
means, from the verb "slavit," meaning
ito glorify." They covered most OF
Western Russia, the Danubian provinces,
a good deal of Eastern Germany. They
we're a mystical, dreamy, virile people,
not so much given to fighting as either
the Celts or the Nordics; their minds a
reservoir of genius.
Dates are quite uncertain. Even before
the Slav migrations started, civilizations
were flourishing along the Nile. Their
westward movements cover much OF the
period of the rise and fall of Greece
and Rome. The legions encountered
them in the Danubian forests, at about
the time their comrades were waging
battle with the Celts in the forests OF
France and Germany.
Then the Nordics, outgrowing their
inhospitable Northern haven, turned
southwark and southeastward, pene-
trating far into the country of the AL
pines in every direction. Along some
routes this penetration was massive,
leaving major marks in the physical
makeup of the population. In other di-
rections it was very superficial, as in
Russia. The major battlefield, or per-
haps amalgamation point of the two
physical types and cultures was Ger
many. There it remained, and remains
to this day, almost a drawn battle. or
long, skirmish- disturbed armistice.
Confusion Over Racial Terms.
A good deal of confusion may have
arisen in recent years over some of the
terms employed in the racial squabbles
German propagandists used to like to
refer to their countrymen as "Nordics-'
and an aggressive "Nordic supremacy"
school was much in evidence a few
years ago. BY some argument or other
about everything worthwhile that ever
happened in the world was attributed
to a "Nordic" Today even German
anthropologtsts. whose science is gov
ernment made, hardly PROFOUND such q
theory. 1t is too apparent that great
stretches of Germany are basically Al
pine, quite closely related to Slav, in
population although perhaps with q
rather superficial Nordic upper crust.
Students of German genius have stressed
again and again that it usually has
arisen on the Alpine -Nordic border.
The two races are so similar that crosses
between them are not dysgenic. Yet they
are sufficiently different that stimulat-
ing effect arises from such crosses. For
'Nordic" there has lately been substi-
tuted the word "Aryan"-to which an
arbitrary meaning has been assigned.
The term was originally coined to
designate family of languages-the
tongues spoken by all of Europe except
by the Films and Hungarians on the
one hand and the Basques of the
Pyrenees on the other. The Finnish
and Hungarian languages belong to an
entirely different family, related to the
Tartar, the Mongolian, the Turkish and
the Japanese. The origin of the Basque
tongue is mystery. Some believe that
it may be an island of the elsewhere ex-
:,