It would seem, then, that as well physically as spiritually the Prussians in so far as they are Finnic[1] are of the same Turanian stock to which the Huns belonged and if only thus related to them. That the relationship is closer still a thousand things of which we are witnesses to-day, as for many hundred years past, would lead us to surmise. And if they are not the same Barbarians, their barbarism is the same.
It was at any rate Attila’s name that Kaiser Wilhelm II flung across an astonished world a decade ago as the French might cry out upon Charlemagne or Blessed Joan of Arc or Napoleon. And since he has appealed to the Huns, to the Huns let him go.
For us there remain these facts to be considered, if, as is so difficult, we are to benefit from the lessons of History.
Rome always defeated the Barbarians, but never succeeded in destroying their power to renew the attack. Stilicho defeated Alaric whenever he met him, yet Alaric at last entered Rome. Aetius broke Attila repeatedly, yet Attila at last was able to threaten Italy. Belisarius and Narses broke Vitiges and Totila, yet these Barbarians ruined the peninsula. In spite of defeat the attack was always renewed, because Rome had never really broken the Barbarian power. And if we to-day spare the Germanies the uttermost price and the last, if we fail to push this war to the bitter and the necessary end, in twenty years or in fifty they will fall upon us again and perhaps in an hour for us less fortunate. Delenda est Carthago.
It was perhaps not within the power of Rome to break once and for all the advance of the Barbarians. Time has been upon our side. To-day if our courage and our endurance are strong enough, if we set our face like a flint, we may once for all rid Europe of this Barbarian peril, which, now as always intent on the destruction and the loot of civilisation, pleads necessity, invokes its gods, and knows neither justice nor mercy.
Rome could not mobilise: we can. In the old days the Barbarians could break off first the point, as it were, of civilisation, then a little more, and so on till the butt choked them. They can no longer do that. The railway and the automobile, the telegraph and the telephone have endowed us with such a power of mobilisation that we can compel the Barbarians to meet the butt of civilisation first instead of last. If we have the will we may destroy once and for all the power of the Barbarians, who have attempted to destroy civilisation, not only under Alaric, Attila, and Totila, but under Frederick of Hohenstaufen and Luther, and having finally overcome them we may erect once more in Europe the Pax Romana and perhaps—who knows?—even the old unity of Christendom.
May, 1915.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Godron says with truth: “The Prussians are neither Germans nor Slavs; the Prussians are the Prussians. But one must remember that they were of Finno-Slavonic race, not Teutonic, and were subject to the King of Poland till comparatively recent times. They remained heathen long after the rest of Germany was Christianised.”