The presence in Europe of Hungarians, a race bearing strong linguistic and physical affinity to Turki tribesmen, is perhaps best explained by the prolific harvests yielded by the broad valleys of the Danube and Theiss. Huns, Avars and Magyars, one and all Asiatics wandering into Europe, were induced to abandon nomadism by the fertility of the boundless Alföld. Western influences took solid root among these descendants of eastern ancestors after their conversion to Christianity and the adoption of the Latin alphabet. So strongly did they become permeated by the spirit of occidental civilization, that the menace of absorption by the Turks was rendered abortive whenever the Sultan’s hordes made successful advances towards Vienna. At the same time, fusion with the Germans was prevented by the oriental origin of the race. The foundation of a separate European nation was thus laid in the Hungarian plains. Language to the Magyar has always represented nationality. When in 1527 St. Stephen’s crown was offered to Ferdinand of Austria in order to strengthen Hungary’s resistance against the Turk, the new ruler pledged himself not to destroy this sacred token of Hungarian political independence. “Nationem et linguam vestram servare non perdere intendimus” was his solemn promise. The germ of a dual form of government was thus created in the presence of the Sultan’s barbarous hordes, but Hungary always preserved its individuality, for at no time did the kingdom form part of the Holy Roman Empire. Closer union with Austria towards the end of the seventeenth century when the right of succession to the Hungarian throne became hereditary in the Hapsburg family, failed to Germanize the land during all the eighteenth century. Later, up to 1867, the persistent struggle of the Magyar against the Austrian was kept up. Attempts to replace German by Hungarian in the governing bodies of counties and municipalities were merely the outward expression of the contest.