The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European historyGrant, Madison
History
The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history
Grant, Madison
Ethnology -- Europe
The Nordics in England are in these days apparently receding before the
Neolithic Mediterranean type. The causes of this decline are the same as
in France and the chief loss is through the wastage of blood by war and
through emigration.
The typical British soldier is blond or red bearded and the typical
sailor is always a blond. The migrating type from England is also
chiefly Nordic. These facts would indicate that nomadism as well as love
of war and adventure are Nordic characteristics.
An extremely potent influence, however, is the transformation of the
nation from an agricultural to a manufacturing community. Heavy,
healthful work in the fields of northern Europe enables the Nordic type
to thrive, but the cramped factory and crowded city quickly weed him
out, while the little brunet Mediterranean can work a spindle, set type,
sell ribbons or push a clerk’s pen far better than the big, clumsy and
somewhat heavy Nordic blond, who needs exercise, meat and air and cannot
live under Ghetto conditions.
The increase of urban communities at the expense of the countryside is
also an important element in the fading of the Nordic type, because the
energetic countryman of this blood is more apt to improve his fortunes
by moving to the city than the less ambitious Mediterranean.
The country villages and the farms are the nurseries of nations, while
cities are consumers and seldom producers of men. The effort now being
made in America to settle undesirable immigrants on farms may, from the
viewpoint of race replacement, be more dangerous than allowing them to
remain in crowded Ghettos or tenements.
If England has deteriorated and there are those who think they see
indications of such decline, it is due to the lowering proportion of the
Nordic blood and the transfer of political power from the vigorous
Nordic aristocracy and middle classes to the radical and labor elements,
both largely recruited from the Mediterranean type.
Only in Scandinavia and northwestern Germany does the Nordic race seem
to maintain its full vigor in spite of the enormous wastage of three
thousand years of the swarming forth of its best fighting men. Norway,
however, after the Viking outburst has never exhibited military power
and Sweden, in the centuries between the Varangian period and the rise
of Gustavus Adolphus, did not enjoy a reputation for fighting
efficiency. All the three Scandinavian countries after vigorously
attacking Christendom a thousand years ago disappear from history as a
nursery for soldiers until the Reformation when Sweden suddenly
reappears just in time to save Protestantism on the Continent. To-day
all three seem to be intellectually anæmic.
Upper and Lower Austria, the Tyrol and Styria have a very considerable
Nordic element which is in political control but the Alpine races are
slowly replacing the Nordics both there and in Hungary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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