4. Carelessness and Credulity. Writers who accept any evidence stated with solemnity and the air of authority, but who subject it to no tests to ascertain its verity and genuineness. Under this head I take exceptions to the statements made by Prof. John Fiske in a recent work, a writer hitherto regarded as safe and reliable.
I will now devote a few minutes to a work entitled Political Science and Constitutional Law, written by Prof. John W. Burgess, of Columbia University, and designed to be a text-book for that and other educational institutions.
Mr. Burgess is a rampant type of what a coldly critical and remorselessly correct writer, John M. Robertson, of London, calls a Celtophobe—a Celt hater. The learned Professor asserts dogmatically that the Celt never has, never can, and never will amount to anything nationally or politically; and that all law, order, and scientific government have sprung from and are due to what he calls the Teutonic races. Professor Burgess is a product of German training and education, and his views have received the cordial endorsement of such a calm and dispassionate authority as the London Times. The careful writer in stating his theory will fortify it with facts and figures and marshal his authorities before proceeding to erect a fabric on it; but Professor Burgess isn’t that kind of a man. He states his theory with an air of profound conviction and authority and goes ahead. His theory, like a good many other fabrics “made in Germany,” looks well, is calculated to deceive the unwary and unthinking, but under very ordinary scrutiny proves to be very commonplace, shoddy.
Let me show you a few of the gems from his treasury:
“Only the Teutonic races have produced national states.... The National State is thus the most modern and most complete solution of the whole problem of political organization which the world has as yet produced; and the fact that it is the creation of the Teutonic political genius stamps the Teutonic races as the political nations par excellence, and authorizes them in the economy of the world to assume the leadership in the establishment and administration of states.”
This brilliant outburst winds up a series of equally impressive statements. Just what the Professor means by National States and political nations I do not know, nor am I sure he knows himself. At any rate, he appears to lay down a doctrine very delightful to these governments which bully nations and steal territories, if not quite so agreeable to those bullied and plundered.
Now listen to his views on the unfortunate Celt; they have the old familiar ring of anti-Irish hysteria, for which familiarity has bred Irish contempt.
“Personal attachment in small bodies to a chosen Chief is the peculiar political trait of the Celtic nations.... The effect of such a political character has always been the organization of the Celtic nations into numberless petty military States, in each of which individual rights have been ignored; between all of which civil war has been the permanent status; and against which foreign force has been continually successful.... Violence and Corruption have always marked the politics of Celtic nations.”
Let us stop for a moment to analyze this tremendous blast from Columbia University, remembering that Germany and England are Professor Burgess’s ideal Teutonic nations.
From the time of the Roman retrocession from England until the landing of William the Norman at Hastings, that unfortunate land was in the hands of one of the dullest, most unimaginative, worst-governed, and worst-governing races history mentions—the Saxons—for six hundred years; it had become a congeries of warring, military chieftainship, in which civilization was almost obliterated, learning had disappeared, religion was at its lowest ebb, life and property had no safety, the people were enslaved, and the coast harried by foreign and victorious foes. The advent of a strong conqueror—a mixed Celt and Norseman—changed all this, hammered England into a strong military kingdom, connected her with the civilization that has made the world what it is—the Latin—and did in six years what the pure Teutonic race had signally failed to do in as many centuries.