part. Caesar
conquered Gaul, but the Roman mixture has not obliterated previous or
subsequent additions. The Latin blood of France was thoroughly diluted
by Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks, Vandals, Normans, and other peoples
of Germanic stamp. When Gaul was partitioned into the Burgundian
kingdom, Austrasia, and Neustria, there were already present the
selective processes which, centuries later, shaped the French and the
German souls. Neustria clung to Roman culture, whilst Austrasia nurtured
the seeds of the specific _Kultur_ which attained its full bloom in the
twentieth century. Through rivalry and war the two types persisted.
Charlemagne crushed the rebellious Saxon spirit and conquered Bavaria.
He unified the divergent tendencies, but only for a time. In 843 his
empire was partitioned. France grew out of the western portion, Germany
out of the eastern. Lotharingia or Lorraine was established as a middle
kingdom. Did kind Fates design it as a guarantee of peace and stability?

The Germans are apt to claim for themselves a pure and Valhallic origin,
an exceptionally unmixed descent of the highest attributes. The
primogenial origin may be hidden in obscurity, but the German people
have absorbed Gauls, Serbs, Poles, Wends, and a medley of Slav and
Celtic races which confound all claims to racial purity. Slavs settled
in Teutonic countries and Teutons settled in Slavonic countries. The
German colonists who invaded Russia at the invitation of Catherine II
were imported to strengthen Russia, just as the Great Elector helped
thousands of Huguenots fleeing from France to settle in Brandenburg, and
gave them the rights of citizenship for the sake of the vitality which
they would impart to his depopulated country.

The belief in the unalloyed purity of races and the consequent battles
for national exclusiveness seem to be founded on one of those gigantic
illusions which hold humanity captive for centuries. Here, as elsewhere,
knowledge will spell freedom. When we realize that here and now nations
are in course of transformation, that the divisions of the past are not
the divisions of to-day, and that we, despite conservatism and
resistance, are made to serve as ingredients in some great mixture of
to-morrow, momentous questions arise. Are nations made by war and
conquest? Are peoples amalgamated by oppressive legislation? Do
political alliances between States create international unities?

Such alliances have not in the pa