Madison Grant

“ The wide distribution of the Satem or Iranian group to the south and west of Asia shows that the Nordics in great numbers conquered the aboriginal inhabitants of these countries and imposed on them the Aryan speech. They invented the caste system to maintain the purity of their blood. In fact, the Hindu word "varna" means both color and caste. In spite of all their efforts, however, the conquering invaders died out almost completely in India and Persia—leaving behind them only their language, and, in some cases, their religion. ”

“ For the world’s future the destruction of wealth is a small matter compared with the destruction of the best human strains, for wealth can be renewed while these strains of the real human aristocracy once lost are lost forever. In the new world that we are working and fighting for, the world of liberty, of justice and of humanity, we shall save democracy only when democracy discovers its own aristocracy as in the days when our Republic was founded. ”

“ The Blacks themselves were raised by slavery from sheer savagery to a feeble imitation of white civilization, and they made more advance in America in two centuries than in as many thousand years in Africa. The presence of slaves, however, was injurious to the Whites. Serfdom has been a curse wherever it has flourished in the New World and it has had a profoundly demoralizing effect on the masters.
American democracy at the start rested on a base of population that was, as already said, homogeneous in race, religion, tradition, and language, and in a relative equality of wealth. ”

“ Alexander with his Nordic features, aquiline nose, fair skin, gently curling light hair and mixed eyes, the left blue and the right very black, typifies this Nordic conquest of the Near East.
It is scarcely possible to-day to find in purity the physical traits of the ancient race in the Greek-speaking lands and islands and it is chiefly among the pure Nordics of Anglo-Norman type that there occur those smooth and regular classic features, especially the brow and nose lines, that were the delight of the sculptors of Hellas. ”

“ In America the events of the last hundred years, especially the vast tide of immigration, have greatly impaired our purity of race and our unity of religion and even threatened our inheritance of English speech. If our English language is saved it will be due in no small degree to the growing world power of the language itself and of its literature, as well as to the world-wide ocean commerce of Great Britain and her overseas empire. ”

“ Whatever may be its intellectual, its literary, its artistic or its musical aptitudes, as compared with other races, the Anglo-Saxon branch of the Nordic race is again showing itself to be that upon which the nation must chiefly depend for leadership, for courage, for loyalty, for unity and harmony of action, for self-sacrifice and devotion to an ideal. ”

“ One is the determination of the white man to keep for himself his own countries, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and many of the smaller islands. With this determination Americans sympathize and sooner or later we may be called on to help protect the White race and the English language in these countries. It seems to be a part of our destiny. The other phase of white supremacy is the white man's effort to benefit the backward races and raise them to civilization by instilling his language, his religion, and his culture into Asiatics and Africans. ”

“ The world war now in full swing with its toll of millions will leave Europe much poorer in Nordic blood. One of its most certain results will be the partial destruction of the aristocratic classes everywhere in northern Europe. In England the nobility has already suffered in battle more than in any century since the Wars of the Roses. This will tend to realize the standardization of type so dear to democratic ideals. If equality cannot be obtained by lengthening and uplifting the stunted of body and of mind, it can be at least realized by the destruction of the exalted of stature and of soul. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Taking the country over, the Whites who have married Indians have not been of a high class. But the total number of Indians in the United States is so small that their future is probably that of being absorbed in the White race through miscegenation, unless it be for a few tribes cultivating a racial purity of their own and, with favorable economic conditions, perpetuating themselves for a long time to come. ”

“ At this point we may remark that Wales, especially along the coasts, has a very large Nordic population. It is absurd to distinguish between England, Scotland, North Ireland, and Wales as is done in the census of the United States. We might just as well distinguish between North England and South England on the ground that the first is Anglian and Danish and the other Saxon and Jutish. The lowlands of Scotland are pure English territory and have been such for a thousand years. ”

“ The dim and uncertain traces of Nordic blood in northern India only serve to emphasize the utter swamping of the white man in the burning South.
The power of racial resistance of a dense and thoroughly acclimated population to an incoming army is very great. No ethnic conquest can be complete unless the natives are exterminated and the invaders bring their own women with them. If the conquerors are obliged to depend upon the women of the vanquished to carry on the race, the intrusive blood strain of the invaders in a short time becomes diluted beyond recognition. ”

“ We must also sympathize with the Whites in Kenya Colony in their opposition to a filling of their country with cheap Hindu labor. As Americans we can understand the Negro and recognize his cheerful qualities, but we can have little sympathy with the Hindu whom we have expressly barred from our Pacific Coast. These Hindus, with the Chinese, have ruined the native races of many of the Polynesian Islands. They have been for ages in contact with the highest civilizations, but have failed to benefit by such contact, either physically, intellectually, or morally. ”

“ The energy developed in the north is not lost immediately when transferred to the softer conditions of existence in the Mediterranean and Indian countries. This energy endures for several generations and only dies away slowly as the northern blood becomes diluted and the impulse to strive fades.
The contact of Hellene and Pelasgian caused the blossoming of the ancient civilization of Hellas, just as two thousand years later when the Nordic invaders of Italy had absorbed the science, art and literature of Rome, they produced that splendid century we call the Renaissance. ”

“ A storm of protest will arise from the vociferous and influential foreign blocs and from the radicals and half-breeds claiming to be Americans, who will all rush to the defense of their kind. It is strange to find how sensitive we are to any foreign criticism of things American, but how prone we are to listen respectfully to local aliens, who are urging their own interests at the expense of the national welfare. ”

“ Or should we admit the four million picks and shovels which many of our capitalists are urging Congress to admit in order to secure what wealth we can for the moment, leaving it for our descendants to abandon the country to the blacks, browns and yellows, and seek an asylum in New Zealand? I am inclined to think that the thing to do is to make better selection of immigrants, admitting them in fairly large numbers so long as we can sift out the defective strains. ”

“ Thus conservation of that race which has given us the true spirit of Americanism is not a matter either of racial pride or of racial prejudice; it is a matter of love of country, of a true sentiment which is based upon knowledge and the lessons of history rather than upon the sentimentalism which is fostered by ignorance. If I were asked: What is the greatest danger which threatens the American republic to-day? ”

“ In order to curb the influence of these aliens and to prevent their pernicious control by politicians, it [Pg 351] would also be wise to suspend all naturalization for a generation at least. Our citizenship in the past has been made of little value by the absurd way that it has been thrust upon foreigners. Nothing can be more ill-advised politically than the Americanization programs of some worthy people. An American is not made by conferring upon him the franchise, but by the alien's voluntary and genuine acceptance of our language, laws, institutions, and cultural traditions. ”

“ The impulse upward, however, is supplied by a very small number of nations and by a very small proportion of the population in such nations. The section of any community that produces leaders or genius of any sort is only a minute percentage. To utilize and adapt to human needs the forces and the raw materials of nature, to invent new processes, to establish new principles, and to elucidate and unravel the laws that control the universe call for genius. To imitate or to adopt what others have invented is not genius but mimicry. ”

“ One of the strange results of the Civil War has been that while the victorious North sold its birthright of culture, religion, and racial purity for a mess of industrial pottage, the South, though defeated and impoverished, retained its racial inheritance unimpaired. ”