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as members of a universal community of mankind. The love of the whole embraces the love of the part. The hoped-for brotherhood of nations must terminate international warfare without extinguishing the love of our native country.

The Kaiser, as reported in the Berlin papers of 7 March , on the occasion of the conclusion of peace with Russia, sent a message to the Prussian Lower House in which occurred the following words: "Our victory in the East is one of the greatest successes in the world's history, the full significance of which only our grandchildren will rightly appreciate. That, as far as human judgment can foretell, the Germanisation of the Baltic lands is now made secure for all time is a great joy and satisfaction to me. May God soon give us the final victory! I am full of deep gratitude to the Army and to its great leaders." The message is an interesting one, and it deserves some consideration in the light of history. It represents the climax of successive German efforts to secure for the Teuton control over the Baltic and its littoral.

It seems probable that the Teutons were originally a Baltic people. The Danes and the Swedes appear still to occupy their ancestral homes. The traditions, as well as the records of the migrations, of Goths, Gepidae, Vandals, Lombards, and other folk of the common stock point with impressive uniformity to primitive settlements to the inhospitable regions watered by the lower reaches of the Oder and the Vistula. The Teutons, however, were a wandering race, and, partly lured by the wealth and civilisation of the Roman West, partly pressed by the predatory poverty and pervasive barbarism of the Slavonic East, they made their way towards the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. By the year A.D. 400 the southern shores of the Baltic appear to have been clear of Teutons. Slavs of many and various tribes held all the region from the Elbe to the Niemen; beyond them, in Samogitia, Courland, and Livonia dwelt Lithuanians and Letts of kindred Aryan stock; still further north, in Esthonia, Ingermanland, and Finland. abode peoples of Turanian blood.

The return of the Teuton to the evacuated South Baltic strand began with Charles the Great at the close of the eighth century of the Christian era. His conquest of the Saxons extended the Frankish power over the Slavonic peoples who dwelt about the site of modern Lübeck. Beyond that point, however, but little progress was made by either Charles or his successors. The Frankish empire was short-lived. On the one hand it became involved in ruinous adventures in Mediterranean lands; on the other hand, its appearance as a conquering and evangelising power in Baltic lands roused the pagan zeal and the passionate independence of the Danes, and brought down upon Western Christendom the horrors of the Viking invasions. As soon as the worst perils of the Viking attacks were over, in the tenth

century, Henry the Fowler and his son, the Emperor Otto I., recommenced