The Slavs then are a late product of Christian civilization; an unfinished and inharmonious product which is at its worst, where later Greek and Roman influences touched it, most turbulent where modern Western ideas have suddenly affected it, and at its best and rarest where the Slav's own talents and resources have had a chance for rational development and adjustment. That which complicates the problem presented to us by the Slav is the fact that in spite of his occupying practically contiguous territory, the close family bond was early broken by conquering armies, by rival missionary groups, by invading aliens who came to pillage, barter and trade, and by the influx of his neighbours, who varied all the way from Tartar and Turk to German and Magyar; from Finn and Armenian to Greek and Albanian. When we speak of Slavs to-day we refer to Aryan people, whatever that may mean beyond the fact that they are Europeans, presenting no great ethnic variations; although there is no doubt that Mongol and Finnish blood has found its way into the veins of the Eastern Slavs. We also mean that they speak a closely related language, the Slavic; but which has become so differentiated in time that there are now literatures in Russian, Polish, Czechish, Servian and Bulgarian; each a distinct language, differing in alphabet, grammar, accent or sentence construction. Besides these, there are other dialects, vital enough and varied enough to have created their own literature, and zealously guarded as their mother tongue by the people who speak them. These linguistic differences have aided in complicating the religious and political problems among them. Thus, the Russians and the Poles have been made hereditary enemies, largely, because one received its Christian doctrines from Rome and the other from Constantinople; Ruthenians and Poles in Austria have been pitted against each other in an age-long struggle, by a difference in liturgies; Slovaks and Czechs, almost twin brothers, are little better than strangers to one another, because of a few hooks in the alphabet and a few variations in pronunciation. The whole Southern Slavic group remains politically ineffective because of the dissimilarities of the Cyrilian and Latin alphabets and all that their difference is made to imply. Even when transplanted to America, these contentions are magnified by the churches and governments concerned, which thus are effective in the continued separation of related groups. If the Slavs may be called one race, they certainly present a kaleidoscopic conglomerate out of which emerge three groups: the Western, Eastern and Southern Slavs. Besides their common racial bond, each group is related by language, economic environment, determined by climatic and political conditions, and above all, by religion, which is a stronger bond than even ties of racial kinship.