Immigration from Italy, 1866-1910
CHAPTER VI
THE SLAVS
In the dim east of Europe, far from the vertical beams of civilization, lies the melancholy Slavic world, with its 150,000,000 of human beings multiplying twice as fast and dying twice as fast as the peoples of the West. Since the curtain of history rose, the Slavs have been anvil rather than hammer. Subjugated by the Gauls in the first century B. C., by the Germans early in the Christian era, and by the Avars in the sixth century, they have played no master rôle in history and their very name is a conqueror's insult. In the temper of this race there appears to be something soft and yielding. For all their courage, these peaceful agriculturists have shown much less of the fighting, retaliating instinct than the Britons and the Norsemen.
At a time when western Europe was sending forth armies to rescue the Holy Sepulcher much of Slavland lay still in heathen darkness. Human sacrifices and the practice of suttee did not disappear until the adoption of Christianity. Helmold, a priest of Lübeck, who in 1158 was sent to Christianize the Slavs, speaks of them as a "depraved and perverse nation," and their country is to him "a land of horror and a vast solitude." In 1108 the Archbishop of Magdeburg writes in a pastoral letter, "These cruel people, the Slavs, have risen against us."... "They have cut off the heads of Christians and offered them as sacrifices."
Photograph by Hine