The Winning of the West, Volume One | Page 7

when its name had been significantly changed to
England, that branch of the Germanic stock which was in the end to
grasp almost literally world-wide power, and by its overshadowing
growth to dwarf into comparative insignificance all its kindred folk. At
the time, in the general wreck of the civilized world, the making of
England attracted but little attention. Men's eyes were riveted on the
empires conquered by the hosts of Alaric, Theodoric, and Clovis, not
on the swarm of little kingdoms and earldoms founded by the nameless
chiefs who led each his band of hard-rowing, hard-fighting henchmen
across the stormy waters of the German Ocean. Yet the rule and the
race of Goth, Frank, and Burgund have vanished from off the earth;
while the sons of the unknown Saxon, Anglian, and Friesic warriors
now hold in their hands the fate of the coming years.
After the great Teutonic wanderings were over, there came a long lull,
until, with the discovery of America, a new period of even vaster race
expansion began. During this lull the nations of Europe took on their
present shapes. Indeed, the so-called Latin nations--the French and
Spaniards, for instance--may be said to have been born after the first set
of migrations ceased. Their national history, as such, does not really
begin until about that time, whereas that of the Germanic peoples
stretches back unbroken to the days when we first hear of their
existence. It would be hard to say which one of half a dozen races that
existed in Europe during the early centuries of the present era should be
considered as especially the ancestor of the modern Frenchman or
Spaniard. When the Romans conquered Gaul and Iberia they did not in
any place drive out the ancient owners of the soil; they simply
Romanized them, and left them as the base of the population. By the
Frankish and Visigothic invasions another strain of blood was added, to
be speedily absorbed; while the invaders took the language of the
conquered people, and established themselves as the ruling class. Thus
the modern nations who sprang from this mixture derive portions of

their governmental system and general policy from one race, most of
their blood from another, and their language, law, and culture from a
third.
The English race, on the contrary, has a perfectly continuous history.
When Alfred reigned, the English already had a distinct national being;
when Charlemagne reigned, the French, as we use the term to-day, had
no national being whatever. The Germans of the mainland merely
overran the countries that lay in their path; but the sea-rovers who won
England to a great extent actually displaced the native Britons. The
former were absorbed by the subject-races; the latter, on the contrary,
slew or drove off or assimilated the original inhabitants. Unlike all the
other Germanic swarms, the English took neither creed nor custom,
neither law nor speech, from their beaten foes. At the time when the
dynasty of the Capets had become firmly established at Paris, France
was merely part of a country where Latinized Gauls and Basques were
ruled by Latinized Franks, Goths, Burgunds, and Normans; but the
people across the Channel then showed little trace of Celtic or
Romance influence. It would be hard to say whether Vercingetorix or
Caesar, Clovis or Syagrius, has the better right to stand as the prototype
of a modern French general. There is no such doubt in the other case.
The average Englishman, American, or Australian of to-day who
wishes to recall the feats of power with which his race should be
credited in the shadowy dawn of its history, may go back to the
half-mythical glories of Hengist and Horsa, perhaps to the deeds of
Civilis the Batavian, or to those of the hero of the Teutoburger fight,
but certainly to the wars neither of the Silurian chief Caractacus nor of
his conqueror, the after-time Emperor Vespasian.
Nevertheless, when, in the sixteenth century, the European peoples
began to extend their dominions beyond Europe, England had grown to
differ profoundly from the Germanic countries of the mainland. A very
large Celtic element had been introduced into the English blood, and, in
addition, there had been a considerable Scandinavian admixture. More
important still were the radical changes brought by the Norman
conquest; chief among them the transformation of the old English
tongue into the magnificent language which is now the common
inheritance of so many widespread peoples. England's insular position,
moreover, permitted it to work out its own fate comparatively

unhampered by the presence of outside powers; so that it developed a
type of nationality totally distinct from the types of the European
mainland.
All this is not foreign to American history. The vast movement by
which this continent was conquered and peopled cannot be rightly
understood