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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



The Jewish Year Book reckons there are to- 

 day about 10,000,000 in Europe, 3,000,000 in the 

 United States, and 1,000,000 in the rest of the 

 world. It reckons 100,000 in France, 106,000 

 in the Netherlands, 230,000 in Rumania, 257,- 

 000 in the United Kingdom, 615,000 in Germany, 

 1,300,000 in what was formerly Austria-Hun- 

 gary, and 7,000,000 in Russia. In Denmark, 

 Norway, Sweden, Portugal, and Spain there 

 are comparatively few. 



The great number in Russia largely trace 

 back to Casimir the Great, a Polish king. His 

 favorite, Esther, a devoted Jewess like her 

 namesake in the Bible, persuaded Casimir to 

 offer the Jews a home in Poland. The Jews 

 had multiplied, especially in that part of Poland 

 which Russia secured in the three partitions 

 and which, with constantly changing bound- 

 aries, constituted the Russian Pale. When 

 Casimir died, in 1370, Polish toleration ended. 

 Instead there was often the ferocious shout, 

 "Hep, Hep!" with which the pogrom began. 

 A pogrom is an organized massacre and "Hep" 

 is supposedly derived from the initials of 

 "Hierosolyma est perdita." 



The fires through which the Jews have 

 passed only intensified their remarkable do- 

 mestic and racial devotion. There is no posi- 

 tion of honor or confidence where one does 

 not now find a Jew. There is no height or 

 distinction — political, diplomatic, financial, dra- 

 matic, artistic, literary — which the sons and 

 daughters of Israel have not attained. 



THE GYPSIES 



The Gypsies are first found in the Greek 

 islands and continental Greece early in the 

 fourteenth century. No tradition exists as to 

 how they arrived or whence they came. After- 

 ward, they wandered through the Balkan Pen- 

 insula, settling nowhere except as the greater 

 number were seized along the way and made 

 serfs or slaves. 



In 1417 they appeared in western Europe, 

 showing a peculiar pass or safe-conduct 

 wherein they were called Tsigani. This pass, 

 signed by Sigismund, king of Hungary and 

 German emperor, granted permission to go 

 wherever they pleased in the king's dominions, 

 ordered his subjects to show them kindness 

 and protection, and forbade interference with 

 them of any sort. A little later their roving 

 bands reached Italy, France, and the British 

 Islands. 



Believed to have come from Egypt, their 

 English name was Gypsies. The French, how- 

 ever, called them Bohemians, thinking they had 

 originated in Bohemia. They called themselves 

 Rom, supposed to mean man. This term was 

 possibly picked up in passage through south- 

 eastern Europe. Among their many other 

 names were Hagarenes, children of Hagar, 

 Saracens, as from Arabia, and Athingani, or 

 "Touch-me-nots," from a heretical sect in Asia 

 Minor. 



Restrictive laws have hampered and some- 

 times entirely curtailed their former vagrancy. 



Most Gypsies now live in houses, though still 

 retaining their restless propensities. Existing 

 in every country, they have been accurately 

 counted nowhere. There are probably not over 

 700,000 in Europe, of whom three-fourths are 

 located in Hungary, Rumania, and the Balkan 

 Peninsula, where they enjoy the same civil 

 rights as the other inhabitants. Without coun- 

 try or traditions or religion of their own, they 

 readily profess whatever is nearest. 



The Gypsies are of wiry figure, with black, 

 often silky, hair; large, shining, black eyes; 

 perfect teeth, regular and white, and a glow- 

 ing rich complexion, which early becomes 

 tawny. Their young women often possess a 

 brilliant but soon fading beauty. In music 

 and dance, the untrammeled freedom of the 

 race finds full expression. Liszt ascribes to the 

 Gypsies "the origin of Hungarian national 

 music." Many of the most popular Rumanian, 

 Serbian, and Bulgarian ballads and tunes are 

 derived from the Gypsies. 



Our chief interest in the Gypsy is his lan- 

 guage. Toward the end of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury three scholars, working apart and un- 

 known to one another, discovered that his 

 "jargon" is a primitive Indo-European lan- 

 guage, now spoken nowhere else and contained 

 in no manuscript or book. Corrupted and de- 

 based, yet radically the same, it has been pre- 

 served through uncounted years and unknown 

 wanderings on the lips of this mysterious peo- 

 ple. An eminent Oriental investigator, Dr. Pas- 

 pati, believed that the Romany was an ancient 

 sister of the Sanscrit and that the Gypsy is the 

 most ancient Indo-European in Europe. 



THE GERMANS* 



The name German during these, last years 

 has been so blackened and befouled by its own 

 children that it can never regain its former 

 place in the respect and esteem of men. But, 

 before militarism destroyed idealism, before 

 the Prussian virus poisoned the German soul, 

 there was no department of research, art, or 

 literature which the Germans did not distin- 

 guish. Obscured from the world's thought to- 

 day by an interposing pall are the thinkers, 

 poets, philosophers, and reformers of Ger- 

 many's great past. 



The main body of Germans has occupied the 

 same territory from a period antedating the 

 Christian era. Though absorbing many Slavic 

 elements, they are as a people less composite 

 than the Italians or the French. 



The number of inhabitants of the German 

 Empire at the last census, inclusive of 1,870,000 

 persons in Alsace-Lorraine and of 1,260,000 



* See also, in National Geographic Maga- 

 zine, "Peasant Life in the Black Forest," by 

 Karl Frederick Geiser (September, 1908); "A 

 Corner of Old Wurttemberg," by B. H. Bux- 

 ton (October, 191 1) ; "The German Nation" 

 (September, 1914) ; "Hildesheim, the Town of 

 Many Gables," by Florence Craig Albrecht 

 (February, 1915). 



