THE CROSSING OF THE RACES 49 * 



when guided by unscrupulous leaders this tendency often shows itself 

 in riotous uprisings which are entirely out of proportion to the griev- 

 ances against which they are directed. However, the Slav has one 

 redeeming feature which, if properly utilized, might, in time, offset 

 these undesirable characteristics. This feature might properly be called 

 his great willingness to learn new things. He is not clannish. He has 

 no innate deep-grounded instinct against getting acquainted. Naturally 

 diffident and retiring on account of long centuries of class distinction, 

 he is not prone to make the first advances, and consequently, if left to 

 himself, he will tend to congregate with his kind. But his children 

 quickly make friends with ours, and the foreign parents never dis- 

 courage this tendency. Considering the short time that he has been 

 with us, and his ignorance of our language, he has shown a marked 

 tendency to amalgamate, and so long as we allow him to come at all, we 

 should encourage this tendency, for although very different from us in 

 his natural habit of thoughts and intellectual gifts, these differences 

 are not of a kind that tend to produce moral or intellectual deteriora- 

 tion, and from a physical standpoint he will add to, rather than sub- 

 tract from, the efficiency of our race. 



The Slav and the Hun have been associated together so long in 

 Europe, and their immigration to this country has been, in each case, 

 extended over practically the same period of time, that it is quite the 

 natural thing to consider them both together when making a study of 

 their special race characteristics and possibilities of amalgamation. 

 However, it is more a community of interests and political institutions 

 than it is a racial identity that makes us class them together and speak 

 of the Slavish and Hungarian immigrant as practically of the same 

 kind. In reality these two stocks are essentially different and have 

 shown rather wide differences in their respective abilities to adopt the 

 ways of western civilization. The true Hungarians or Magyars are a 

 Mongolian or Turanian stock. They left their Asiatic home about 

 1,000 years ago and descended upon Europe as a barbarous horde that 

 for fifty years struck terror into the hearts of the neighboring inhab- 

 itants of Germany and Italy. Finally the Germans conquered them and 

 they were almost at once forced to accept the alternative of western 

 civilization or racial extermination. They chose the former, and imme- 

 diately they demonstrated a high degree of adaptability to democratic 

 political institutions. They united with the other kingdoms of eastern 

 Europe to stay the march of the Ottoman Turks, and come in for a full 

 share of credit in the series of events which finally resulted in the naval 

 battle of Lepanto in 1571, when the long struggle between the two 

 opposing religions for the possession of Europe and the consequent 

 mastery of the world was forever settled in favor of Christianity. 

 Thus we see that the Hungarians not only adapted themselves to western 

 ideals, conforming to the manners and customs and religion of the 



