. They even left descendants among
the Berbers of North Africa; and, as we have learnt already, some of
them went as far east as the Black Sea. The Belgians, Dutch, and
Germans of Caesar's day were all Nordic. So were the Franks, from whom
France takes its name. The Nordic blood, of course, became more or
less mingled with that of the different peoples the Nordic tribes
subdued; and new blood coming in from outside made further changes
still. But the Nordic strain prevailed, as that of the conquerors,
even where the Nordic folk did not outnumber all the rest, as they
certainly did in Great Britain. The Franks, whose name meant "free
men", at last settled down with the Gauls, who outnumbered them; so
that the modern French are a blend of both. But the Gauls were the
best warriors of all the Celts: it took Caesar eight years to conquer
them. So we know that Frenchmen got their soldier blood from both
sides. We also know that they learnt a good deal of their civilization
from the Romans and passed it on to the empire-building Normans, who
brought more Nordic blood into France. The Normans in their turn
passed it on to the Anglo-Saxons, who, with the Jutes and Danes, form
the bulk, as the Normans form the backbone, of most English-speaking
folk within the British Empire. The Normans are thus the great bond of
union between the British Empire and the French. They are the
Franco-British kinsfolk of the sea.

We must not let the fact that Prussia borders on the North Sea and the
Baltic mislead us into mistaking the Prussians for the purest offspring
of the Nordic race. They are nothing of the kind. Some of the finest
Nordics did stay near their Baltic home. But these became Norwegians,
Swedes, and Danes; while nearly all the rest of the cream of this
mighty race went far afield. Its Franks went into France by land. Its
Normans went by sea. Others settled in Holland and Belgium and became
the Dutch and Flemings of today. But the mightiest host of hardy
Norsemen crossed the North Sea to settle in the British Isles; and from
this chosen home of merchant fleets and navies the Nordic British have
themselves gone forth as conquering settlers across the Seven Seas.

The Prussians are the least Nordic of all the Germans, and most Germans
are rather the milk than the cream of the Nordic race; for the cream
generally sought the sea, while the milk stayed on shore. The
Prussians have no really Nordic forefathers exce