Teutons

“ Ardarich raised the Teuton Gepids and Ostrogoths. The Teutons who had obeyed Attila, turned on their Tartar conquerors, the only people who had ever subdued German men, and then only by brute force of overpowering numbers. At Netad, upon the great plain between the Drave and the Danube, they fought the second Hunnenschlacht, and the Germans conquered. Thirty thousand Huns fell on that dreadful day, and the rest streamed away into the heart of Asia, into the infinite unknown deserts from whence the foul miscreants had streamed forth, and left the Teutons masters of the world. ”

“ Every Teuton must fall on his face before an inferior Teuton; until they all find, in the foul marshes towards the Baltic, the very lowest of all possible Teutons, and worship him--and find he is a Slav. ”

“ But the South-western division plays a great part in the history of the sixth and seventh centuries. ♦Analogy between Teutons and Slaves.♦ Their position with regard to the Eastern Empire is a kind of shadow of the position held by the Teutonic nations with regard to the Western Empire. The Slaves play in the East, though less thoroughly and less brilliantly, the same part, half conquerors, half disciples, which the Teutons played in the West. During the sixth century they appear only as ravagers; in the seventh they appear as settlers. ♦Slavonic settlements under Heraclius. ”

“ For they've every kind of "record" that the Teutons want to choose;
They have battle cries that sounded for centuries in the Highlands,
They have war cries fierce and stirring as the breath of Munster gales;
They are shoutin' to the heavens, and they're shoutin' to the Kaiser,
"Faugh-a-ballagh!" sons of Odin, or we'll tie you up like bales.
O, the Kaiser's bhoys are dramin' of a naval base at Calais,
But they wakin' ivery mornin' full of sorrow and of gloom;
For the little Belgian sojers cut the dykes and flood their trenches,
And they find their dugouts only jist a bathtub or a tomb. ”

“ Conqueror of the Roman Empire, and the legitimate inheritor of its glory, the race of Teutons has sent its sons broadcast over the earth, and has its offshoots, as flourishing communities, on every continent. ”

“ Our first glimpse of the Teutons shows them in their central German land, already occupying both sides of the Rhine, though seemingly not very old settlers on its left bank. The long wanderings of the various Teutonic and Slavonic tribes over all parts of central Europe, their settlements in the southern and western lands, are all matters of history. So is the great Teutonic settlement in the British islands, which partly exterminated, partly assimilated, their Celtic inhabitants, so as to leave them as mere a remnant, though a greater remnant, as they themselves had made the Basques. ”

“ The Teutons loved personal freedom. They never called any man master, but followed their chosen leader as companions and equals. They could not even bear to have the houses of their villages set close together. And again we see the same independent spirit expressed in their assemblies of freemen, in which meetings, all matters of public interest were debated and decided. In this trait of the Teutonic disposition lay the germ of representative government and of Protestant, or Teutonic Christianity. ”

“ Along the country of the Danube, from the Euxine to the Alps, the Teutons had still the advantage of interior lines, and vast bodies of men—Herules, Gepids, Ostrogoths, Lombards—were coming down in an enormous échellon similar to that which forced the Rhine; to force Italy at the same fatal point—Venetia. The party who could command the last reserve would win, as is the rule. And the last reserves were with our race. They must win. ”

“ That's one reason so many Teutons have scarred faces. The Anglo-Saxon spirit in a sporting crowd is for the little fellow. In Germany, it's for the big fellow—the fellow who already has everything on his side. ”

“ In his book, the Germania, Tacitus, a famous Roman historian of the first century, describes these Teutons, and besides drawing attention to their primitive customs and lack of culture, he made copy of their simplicity to lash the vices of his own countrymen.
The Germans, he said, did not live in walled towns but in straggling villages standing amid fields. These were either shared as common pasturage or tilled in allotments, parcelled out annually amongst the inhabitants. A number of villages would form a pagus or canton, a number of pagi a civitas or state. ”

“ AS. locc, E. lock, OIc. lokkr, Du. lok, ‘lock’ A common Teut. word for ‘lock’ (Goth. *lukks is by chance not recorded) , and peculiar to the Teutons, who from the earliest times laid special stress on the mode of wearing the hair; the freeman was distinguished by his long streaming locks, while the bondman wore his hair short. The Southerners (see fahl) were specially struck with the golden curly hair of the Teutons when they first came into contact with them. It is true that curls were considered effeminate by the earlier Northmen, though in Germany they were fondly cherished. ”

“ How different it is when we come to consider the Teutons! When we have abstracted all the Latin words, the French words, the Celtic words, etc., from our vocabulary, the “English” words which remain are all Teutonic; for we, ourselves, are a branch of the Teutonic race. [8] Accordingly some of our older and most English words contain buried vestiges of the lives which our ancestors once lived in the continental forests. ”

“ THE TEUTONIC RELIGION. WITCHES
The Teutons, that race of northern peoples called by the Romans,
"barbarians," comprised the Goths and Vandals who lived in
Scandinavia, and the Germans who dwelt north of Italy and east of
Gaul.
The nature of the northern country was such that the people could
not get a living by peaceful agriculture. ”

“ Teutons, who have had the largest sphere for intellectual rivalry with their neighbors, have the broadest skulls of all except the Jews, who have, so to speak, lived by their wits the last two thousand years. ”

“ If such evidence is too strong in any case and forces an admission, the foreign inventor or discoverer is rather made to appear presumptuous in acting before some German got around to it. The Teutons never think, talk and write in terms of humanity—only in terms of Germanity. ”

“ Among those whose Aryan descent is generally recognized as beyond dispute are the Teutons, to whom the Angles and Saxons belonged.
The Teutonic or Germanic people, after dwelling together in a body, appear to have scattered in various directions, their language gradually breaking up into three main groups, which can be already clearly distinguished in the 4th century A.D., North Germanic or Scandinavian, West Germanic or Low and High German, and East Germanic, of which the only important representative is Gothic. ”

“ But among the many good qualities of ourselves and our kinsmen, tender care for conquered foes has seldom been reckoned; Western Celt and Eastern Slavonian know this full well. Hard times were at hand; the old worn-out Empire of Rome was to receive fresh life-blood from the healthy Teutons. In the Fifth Century, our brethren overran Spain, Gaul, and Italy; becoming lords of the soil, and overlaying with their own words the old Latin dialects spoken in those provinces. To this time belongs the Beowulf, which is to us English (may I not say, to all Teutons?) ”

“ Broad-fronted, broad-bottomed Teutons, they stand in solid phalanx foursquare to the points of compass; they constitute the modern world, they have earned their vantage-ground, and held it through ages of adverse possession. ”

“ We find, then, two groups of belligerents pitted against each other, whose resources in men, money and economic supplies are strikingly unequal. The Teutons are by far the weaker side, and even in spite of their long preparations ought to have been thoroughly beaten long ago. So evident and encouraging was the comparison that the Entente nations themselves boldly grounded their calculations on it, and anticipated a brief spell of warfare and a decisive victory. ”

“ Smarting under the rebuff he had received at the hands of the Swiss and German Reformers, he is nowise disposed to find the Teutons and their congeners or neighbours however designated, an interesting people, or their territories as in any way attractive. ”

“ For Austria to pursue further its policy of Teutonism is madness. If the monarchy wishes to live it must be neither German, for there is no room in Europe for two Germanic Empires side by side, nor wholly Slavonic, like Russia. Her manifest destiny is, or rather has been, to form a bridge between Germany and Russia, between the Slavs and Teutons, between the west and the east. For Germany to go to war to fight the Slavic peril is conceivable, even justifiable ”

“ Countries that shortly before were Celtic in blood, become, through no material change in that blood, Latin; by language, and, as we say, by race. The moment comes for a Teutonic expansion. The laya center in Sweden quickens; there is a Swedish or Gothic invasion of Celtic lands south of the Baltic; the continental Teutons presently are freed. It is the expansion of a spirit, of a psychic something. People that were before Celts (just as Mr. Dooley is an Anglo-Saxon) become somehow Teutons. The language expands, and carries a tradition with it. ”

“ Progress always demands as its price the best the age or generation has to give. The installation of the Goths and Teutons in Europe cost five centuries of woe and strife,—we can now see why; for it was destined to give the world a better civilization and a better leadership. But this leadership could not come from the Teuton alone: he is never prompted to enterprise in the world at large; he is never aggressive, he is strong only at home. Why then those six generations of viking conquest and mingling with the conquered, if not to supply this lack through the evolution of the British nation? ”

“ But the Teutons, especially the Saxon Teutons, and, above all others, those in the Northern States of America, with their immense love of individual liberty, hate despotism, either political or ecclesiastical. They perpetually demand more Christianity and democracy; that each shall do his own work, and rejoice in its result; that each shall have his share in the government of all. ”

“ The Celts were roughly driven out of their old abodes, on the banks of the Upper Danube and elsewhere, by the intruding Teutons. The former were far the more civilised of the two races: they have left in their word hall an abiding trace of their settlement in Bavaria, and of their management of salt works. The simple word leather is thought by good judges to have been borrowed from the Celts by their Eastern neighbours. [18]
Others suffered besides the Celts. A hundred years before Christ's birth, the Teutons forced their way into Italy, but were overthrown by her rugged champion Marius. ”

“ A people as yet uncultivated, with a very lively power of imagination, and at the same time childlike in mind and free from national vanity (the Teutons seem to have had all these qualities) is attracted by what is far away, and likes to make remote countries and distant islands the habitation for the objects of its desires and the glories of which it dreams. ”

“ Man easily makes himself at home under any sky, and the national characteristic, far from being much changed by the place of abode, dominates and changes the latter after its own pattern. Moreover, the variety of natural influences in the region inhabitated by the Teutons is not very great. Just as little importance should be attached to the fact that the Teutonic race has intermingled with the former inhabitants of the countries it conquered ”

“ When we recollect the invasion of the Normans; the wholesale eastward migration of the Crusaders, men, women, and children; and the later colonization by Teutonic peoples, of every quarter of the globe, is there anything wonderful in the belief that similar migratory manias may have seized the old tribes; that the spirit of Woden, ‘the mover,’ may have moved them, and forced them to go ahead, as now? Doubtless the theory is strange. But the Teutons were and are a strange people; so strange, that they have conquered—one may almost say that they are—all nations which are alive upon the globe ”

“ While the Slavs form the great bulk of the inhabitants of eastern Europe, the Teutons, or people of Teutonic race and language, are widely spread in the west and north, including the German-speaking people of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland, the English-speaking people of the British Islands (in a very far-away sense) , the Scandinavian-speaking people of Norway and Sweden, the Flemish-speaking people of Belgium, and practically the whole people of Denmark and Holland. ”

“ There is no stock, having claims to a generic nationality, in which the principle of progress has, from the outset, been so strongly marked, as in those hardy, brave and athletic tribes in the north of Europe, for whom the name of Teutons conveys, perhaps, a more comprehensive meaning, than the comparatively later one of Saxons. The object of this race appears continually to be, and to have been, to do more than has previously been done ”

“ It is more than questionable whether West Aryan ghosti-s, ‘stranger,’ is prop. ‘eater, devourer,’ and belongs to the Sans. root ghas, ‘to eat.’ It is worthy of notice in how many ways Teutons and Romans have transformed the idea underlying the old inherited word for ‘stranger'; the Roman regards him as an enemy, among the Teutons he enjoys the greatest privileges — a fine confirmation of Tacitus' account in the Germania. ”