The social status of woman varies largely with race but here religion plays a part. In the Roman Republic and in ancient Germany women were held in high esteem. In the Nordic countries of to-day women’s rights have received much more recognition than among the southern nations with their traditions of Latin culture. To this general statement modern Germany is a marked exception. The contrast is great between the mental attitude toward woman of the ancient Teutons and that of the modern Germans.
The pure Nordic peoples are characterized by a greater stability and steadiness than are mixed peoples such as the Irish, the ancient Gauls and the Athenians among all of whom the lack of these qualities was balanced by a correspondingly greater versatility.
The mental characteristics of the Mediterranean race are well known and this race, while inferior in bodily stamina to both the Nordic and the Alpine, is probably the superior of both, certainly of the Alpines, in intellectual attainments. In the field of art its superiority to both the other European races is unquestioned, although in literature and in scientific research and discovery the Nordics far excel it.
Before leaving this interesting subject of the correlation of spiritual and moral traits with physical characters we may note that these influences are so deeply rooted in everyday consciousness that the modern novelist or playwright does not fail to make his hero a tall, blond, honest and somewhat stupid youth and his villain a small, dark and exceptionally intelligent individual of warped moral character. So in Celtic legend as in the Græco-Roman and mediæval romances, prince and princess are always fair, a fact rather indicating that the mass of the people were brunet at the time when the legends were taking shape. In fact, “fair” is a synonym for beauty. Most ancient tapestries show a blond earl on horseback and a dark-haired churl holding the bridle.
The gods of Olympus were almost all described as blond, and it would be difficult to imagine a Greek artist painting a brunet Venus. In church pictures all angels are blond, while the denizens of the lower regions revel in deep brunetness. “Non Angli sed angeli,” remarked Pope Gregory when he first saw Saxon children exposed for sale in the Roman slave-mart.
In depicting the crucifixion no artist hesitates to make the two thieves brunet in contrast to the blond Saviour. This is something more than a convention, as such quasi-authentic traditions as we have of our Lord strongly suggest his Nordic, possibly Greek, physical and moral attributes.
These and similar traditions clearly point to the relations of the one race to the other in classic, mediæval and modern times. How far they may be modified by democratic institutions and the rule of the majority remains to be seen.
The wars of the past two thousand years in Europe have been almost exclusively wars between the various nations of this race or between rulers of Nordic blood.
From a race point of view the present European conflict is essentially a civil war and nearly all the officers and a large proportion of the men on both sides are members of this race. It is the same old tragedy of mutual butchery and mutual destruction between Nordics, just as the Nordic nobility of Renaissance Italy seems to have been possessed with a blood mania to murder one another. It is the modern edition of the old Berserker blood rage and is class suicide on a gigantic scale.
At the beginning of the war it was difficult to say on which side there was the preponderance of Nordic blood. Flanders and northern France are more Nordic than south Germany, while the backbone of the armies that England put into the field as well as of those of her colonies was almost purely Nordic and a large proportion of the Russian army was of the same race. As heretofore stated, with America in the war, the greater part of the Nordics of the world are fighting against Germany.