WHY THE GERMANS ARE BRUTES.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 16, 26 February 1918, Page 2

WHY THE GERMANS ARE BRUTES.

V INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES AND BESTIAL FORCE. Professor Arthur Keith has made a remarkable comparison of the skulls of representative Englishmen and Germans. The professor is one of the best known anthropologists, and is especially noted as an authority on skulls. In making his present investigation he estimated the skull measurements of Tepresentative Germans, including General von Hindenburg, General von Mackensen, and General von Kluck,and compared them with those of a number of representative Englishmen, including Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Asquith, and General Sir Douglas Haig. As a result Professor Keith announces that the representative German skull is essentially different from the British skull in that the German skull is marked by a square form and somewhat retreating forhead, with a heavy projecting jaw of the type known to science as “prognathous,” while the Englishman of the ruling class has a long head, a more highly developed forehead, and a comparatively slight jaw. In other words, the Englishman represents a more advanced type, while the German is nearer to the' primitive man, such, for instance, as the Neanderthal or the Piltdown man. It is a fundamental of anthropologic science that a large forehead with a comparatively small jaw is an indication of progress in the scale of evolution and racial maturity. The heavy jaws of the lower races are partly attributable to chewing great quantities of coarse food, while at the same time the great development of the jaw and face muscles due to this action checks the development of the top of the skull. In the more advanced and mature races the moderate use of well cooked food through' many generations and the long separation in habits and environment from the primitive type that hunted and devoured its food raw have produced a finer and higher type of jaw and favoured the development of the forehead and the top of the skull. One reason for Professor Keith’s investigation was to decide the question whether the Englishman belongs to the same race as the German. Is it a fact that one Teutonic race is fighting its racial cousin for the domination of Europe ? It is known, of course, that the Anglo-Saxons, who colonised England about the eighth century, were a Teutonic—otherwise a Germanic—tribe from the shores of Germany touching upon the North Sea. It is believed, upon reasonable grounds, that England to-day is mainly An-glo-Saxon, in spite of a large admixture of Celtic and other racial elements. It is, therefore, assumed by the majority of persons familiar with history that the dominating strains in Great Britain and Germany are the same—that is, Teutonic. Professor Keith has completely upset this view, and his arguments, as far as they are based on measurements, are unanswerable. If modern Englishmen are mainly Anglo-Saxon and of German origin, then it seems that a new and differers racial type must have arisen in Germany. Professor Keith’s investigation is mainly based on the skull of General von Hindenburg, the most successful, commander in the German array and literally the idol of Prussia. There is little doubt that the majority of Germans would accept him as the best representative of their nation to-day. A profile portrait of General von Hindenburg shows very plainly the characteristics of heavy, prognathous jaw, retreating forehead and squareheadedness, which the professor finds is the prevailing German type. The same characteristics appear in the other leading Germans, but General von Hindenburg shows' them in a more marked degree. The leading representative selected of the British type is Mr. David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, and admittedly the greatest driving force in the Government. It is reasonable to take him as a representative of English public life, since military science is not the chief interest of Great Britain as of Germany. “In the majority of Britons —English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish,” says Professor Keith, “the hinder part of the head, the occiput, projects prominently backward behind the line of the neck ; the British head is long,in comparison with its width. In the past majority of Germans the occiput is fattened, as if the hinder part of the head, when still young and plastic, had been pushed forward and upward. The peculiarity of the German skull is due to no artificial means ; we know that the prominent occiput and flattened occiput are characters which breed true over thousands of years, and that they are characters which indicate a profound racial divergence.” Professor Keith then offers an ingenious explanation why it is that, although the Anglo-Saxons were ori- . ginally a German tribe, there is such a complete divergence between Eng- | iishmen and Germans to-day. ( “With the exodus of the Franks to Prance and the Anglo-Saxons to Britain in the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries of our era, Germ ny was almost denuded of the longheaded elements in her population,’’ says the Professor. “These were concentrated in the western shore lands, and in modern Germany it is only in these same lands, forming less than one-fifth of the total empire, that we find a good proportion of Tong- j heads’ among the German people. When the Franks and Anglo-Saxons

were moving into France ana Englaod the great area now covered by the German empire had been invaded from the east—from the regions now occupied by Russians, Poles, and Czechs—by swarms of people with flat occiputs and short heads—men of the Hindenburg type.

History relates that by the end of the sixth century this type had overrun all the area of modern Germany, except the lands along the western shores. We now know, however, that the premeation of Germany by men of the Hindenburg type did not begin with the break-up of the Roman Empire, ■ In ancient graves of the early-iron, bronze and neolithic ages we find the Hindenburg type, showing that the westward movement of the flat occiputs had set in thousands of years before the days of the Roman Empire. “With the exit of the Pranks and the Anglo-Saxons the short-headed ancestors of modern Germany were left as the dominant type of Germany.” When the Professor argues that the predominant British type of skull represents a more advanced race than the German many people will point to the great scientific achievements and tremendous material progress of the Germans in recent years.

To this it may be replied that none of the great scientific discoveries, inventions, and ideas can be credited to Germans. Such epoch-making discoveries and ideas as those of Darwin, Stephenson, Watt, Franklin, Pasteur, Marconi, and others came from the Anglo-Saxon and other races.

Originality and intellectual creative power are, according to this authority, the highest tests of a mentally advanced race. The modern Germans, who have good physique and great industry, are able to master the ideas and inventions of the older races and use them for their own peculiar purposes.

HUNS CRIB OTHERS’ IDEAS. In the prehistoric German or Teutonic graves the skulls are nearly always long-headed, of the type very commonly found among Englishmen of the upper classes, British farmers, Germans in the north-western corner of Germany, Hollanders, and Scandinavians. On the other hand, it was observed by the great anthropologist, de Quatrefages, that the modern Germans are generally broadheaded and the Bavarians the most distinctly square-headed people in Europe.

Ethnologists now believe that a certain long-headed race that we call Teutonic, one of an innumerable series of Aryan migrations from Asia, spread over what is now Germany and other parts of Europe. It must not be supposed that they wiped out the earlier peoples of the contries they invaded, but being mentally and physically superior, they imposed their language and customs of the inhabitants of jthe lands they conquered. Descendants of the earliest prehistoric peoples survive among the dominant races.

The original Teutonic type is traced unmistakably in ancientt German skulls, in Englishmen, from the time of Alfred the Great down to the present day, and in Frenchmen of the northern part of the country, descendants of the Teutonic race that first established the united French nation. In Germany a large country and greatly exposed on the east' to new migrations from Asia, the original Teutonic stock appears to have been swamped by Invasions of Slavs, Turanians, Mongoloid and other elements. Prussia is certainly largely Slavic.

In Germany also there appears to have been a large and vigorous preTeutonic population, to which the peculiarly square-headed Bavarians may be traced. Professor Keith finally makes the interesting point that races with the flat back head which characterises modern Germans have never shown any aptitude for the sea. Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegians, British, all the races that have been remarkable for exploits at sea have had the projecting back-head. Perhaps the most peculiar fact he cites, in support of this, is that Germany to-day mans her navy almost exclusively with men from the northwestern shores of the empire, where the long-headed Teutonic type still prevails. The full text of Prof. Keith’s paper is published in the Transactions of the Anthropological Society.