his physical difference had
really played so fundamental a part in human history. And that is
exactly the case with the physical difference between the Celts, the
Teutons and the Latins.

I know of no way in which fair-haired people can be prevented from
falling in love with dark-haired people; and I do not believe that
whether a man was long-headed or round-headed ever made much difference
to any one who felt inclined to break his head. To all mortal
appearance, in all mortal records and experience, people seem to have
killed or spared, married or refrained from marriage, made kings or made
slaves, with reference to almost any other consideration except this
one. There was the love of a valley or a village, a site or a family;
there were enthusiasms for a prince and his hereditary office; there
were passions rooted in locality, special emotions about sea-folk or
mountain-folk; there were historic memories of a cause or an alliance;
there was, more than all, the tremendous test of religion. But of a
cause like that of the Celts or Teutons, covering half the earth, there
was little or nothing. Race was not only never at any given moment a
motive, but it was never even an excuse. The Teutons never had a creed;
they never had a cause; and it was only a few years ago that they began
even to have a cant.

The orthodox modern historian, notably Green, remarks on the singularity
of Britain in being alone of all Roman provinces wholly cleared and
repeopled by a Germanic race. He does not entertain, as an escape from
the singularity of this event, the possibility that it never happened.
In the same spirit he deals with the little that can be quoted of the
Teutonic society. His ideal picture of it is completed in small touches
which even an amateur can detect as dubious. Thus he will touch on the
Teuton with a phrase like "the basis of their society was the free man";
and on the Roman with a phrase like "the mines, if worked by forced
labour, must have been a source of endless oppression." The simple fact
being that the Roman and the Teuton both had slaves, he treats the
Teuton free man as the only thing to be considered, not only then but
now; and then goes out of his way to say that if the Roman treated his
slaves badly, the slaves were badly treated. He expresses a "strange
disappointment" that Gildas, the only British chronicler, does not
describe the great Teutonic system. In the opinion of Gildas, a
modification of that o