THE TEUTONS OF EUROPE
While the Slavs form the great bulk of the inhabitants of eastern Europe, the Teutons, or people of Teutonic race and language, are widely spread in the west and north, including the German-speaking people of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland, the English-speaking people of the British Islands (in a very far-away sense), the Scandinavian-speaking people of Norway and Sweden, the Flemish-speaking people of Belgium, and practically the whole people of Denmark and Holland. Yet, though these are racially related there is no such feeling as a Pan-Teutonic sentiment combining them into a racial unity. Instead of community and fraternity, a very marked racial and natural divergence exists between the several peoples named, especially between the British and Germans. Pan-Germanism is not Pan-Teutonism in any proper sense, being confined to the several German countries of Europe, and especially to the combination of states in the German Empire. It is the Teuton considered in this minor sense that has set himself against the Slav, as a measure of self-defense against the torrent of Slavism apparently seeking an outlet in all directions.
Prolific as we know the Anglo-Saxons to have once been and as the Germans still appear to be, there are few instances in human history of a natural growth of population like that of the Slavs in recent years. They have grown to outnumber the Germans nearly three to one, and may perhaps do so in the future in a still greater proportion.
This is a scarcely desirable state of affairs in view of the fact that the Slavs as a whole are lower and more primitive in character and condition than the Germans. The cultivated portion of Slavic populations forms a very small proportion in number of the whole, and stands far in advance of the abundant multitude of peasants and artisans, a vast body of people who are ruled chiefly by fear; fear of the State on one side, of the Church on the other.