Deep seated Castilian traditions associate aristocracy with blondness and the _sangre azul_, or blue blood of Spain, probably refers to the blue eye of the Goth, whose traditional claim to lordship is also shown in the Spanish name for gentleman, “hidalgo,” said to mean “the son of the Goth.” The fact that the blood shows as “blue” through the fair Nordic skin is also to be taken into account. As long as this Gothic nobility controlled the Spanish states during the endless crusades against the Moors, Spain belonged to the Nordic kingdoms, but when their blood became impaired by losses in wars waged outside of Spain and in the conquest of the Americas, the sceptre fell from this noble race into the hands of the native Iberian, who had not the physical vigor or the intellectual strength to maintain the world empire built up by the stronger race. For 200 years the Spanish infantry had no equal in Europe but this distinction disappeared with the opening decades of the seventeenth century. The splendid conquistadores of the New World were of Nordic type, but their pure stock did not long survive their new surroundings and to-day they have vanished utterly, leaving behind them only their language and their religion. After considering well these facts we shall not have to search further for the causes of the collapse of Spain. Gaul at the time of Cæsar’s conquest was under the rule of the Nordic race, which furnished the bulk of the population of the north as well as the military classes elsewhere and, while the Romans killed off an undue proportion of this fighting element, the power and vigor of the French nation have been based on this blood and its later reinforcements. In fact, in the Europe of to-day the amount of Nordic blood in each nation is a very fair measure of its strength in war and standing in civilization. The proportion of men of pure type of each constituent race to the mixed type is also a powerful factor. When, about 1000 B. C., the first Nordics crossed the lower Rhine they found the Mediterranean race in France everywhere overwhelmed by an Alpine population except in the south. Long before the time of Cæsar the Celtic language of these invaders had been imposed upon the entire population and the country had been saturated with Nordic blood, except in Aquitaine which seems to have retained until at least that date its Anaryan Iberian speech. These earliest Nordics in the west were known to the ancient world as Gauls. These Gauls, or “Celts,” as they were called by Cæsar, occupied in his day the centre of France. The actual racial complexion of this part of France was overwhelmingly Alpine then and is so now, but this population had been Celticized thoroughly by the Gauls, just as it was Latinized as completely at a later date by the Romans.