Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/66

56 the circumstances. The affair promised to become an international incident.

A champion of the Prussians was not hard to find. Professor Virchow of Berlin, set himself at work to disprove the theory which thus damned the dominant people of the empire. The controversy, half political and half scientific, waxed hot at times, both disputants being held victorious by their own people. One great benefit flowed indirectly from it all, however. The German government was induced to authorize the official census of the color of hair and eyes of the six million school children of the empire which we have so often mentioned in these pages. One of the resultant maps we have reproduced in this article. It established beyond question the differences in pigmentation between the north and south of Germany. At the same time it showed the similarity in blondness between all the peoples along the Baltic. The Hohenzollern territory was as Teutonic in this respect as the Hanoverian. Thus far had the Prussians vindicated their ethnic reputation. It is profoundly to be regretted that the investigation was not extended by a comprehensive census either of stature or of the head form of adults, similar to those conducted in other countries. Such a project was, in fact, sidetracked in favor of the census of school children. Whether politically inspired, or whether considered derogatory to the noble profession of arms, the Prussian army is forbidden for all scientific investigations of this kind, despite the efforts of Virchow and other eminent authorities in that direction; so that data are still scrappy, as we have seen.

To an American the apparent unwillingness on the part of the Germans boldly to own up to the radical ethnic differences which exist between north and south is incomprehensible. It seems to be not improbable that the Teutonic blond race has so persistently been apotheosized by the Germans themselves as the original Aryan civilizer of Europe, that to acknowledge any other racial descent has come to be considered as a confession of humble origin. Or, more likely still, this prejudice in favor of Teutonism is an unconscious reflection from the shining fact that this type is widely prevalent among the aristocracy all over Europe. Whether Aryan or not, it certainly predominates in the ruling classes to-day. At all events, the attempt is constantly being made to prove that the ethnic contrasts between north and south are the product of environmental influences, and not a heritage from widely different ancestry. This is not an impossibility in respect of pigmentation; but it can