rom
the rear, and deprived them of Syria, Egypt, Africa.

But the Teutons could not have opposed them. During the 7th century the
Lombards in Italy were lazy and divided; the Goths in Spain lazier and
more divided still; the Franks were tearing themselves in pieces by civil
war. The years from A.D. 550 to A.D. 750 and the rise of the
Carlovingian dynasty, were a period of exhaustion for our race, such as
follows on great victories, and the consequent slaughter and collapse.

This was the critical period of the Teutonic race; little talked of,
because little known: but very perilous. Nevertheless, whatever the
Eastern Empire might have done, the Saracens prevented its doing; and if
you hold (with me) that the welfare of the Teutonic race is the welfare
of the world; then, meaning nothing less, the Saracen invasion, by
crippling the Eastern Empire, saved Europe and our race.

And now, gentlemen, was this vast campaign fought without a general? If
Trafalgar could not be won without the mind of a Nelson, or Waterloo
without the mind of a Wellington, was there no one mind to lead those
innumerable armies, on whose success depended the future of the whole
human race? Did no one marshal them in that impregnable convex front,
from the Euxine to the North Sea? No one guide them to the two great
strategic centres, of the Black Forest and Trieste? No one cause them,
blind barbarians without maps or science, to follow those rules of war,
without which victory in a protracted struggle is impossible; and by the
pressure of the Huns behind, force on their flagging myriads to an
enterprise which their simplicity fancied at first beyond the powers of
mortal men? Believe it who will: but I cannot. I may be told that they
gravitated into their places, as stones and mud do. Be it so. They
obeyed natural laws of course, as all things do on earth, when they
obeyed the laws of war: those too are natural laws, explicable on simple
mathematical principles. But while I believe that not a stone or a
handful of mud gravitates into its place without the will of God; that it
was ordained, ages since, into what particular spot each grain of gold
should be washed down from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man
might find it at a certain moment and crisis of his life;--if I be
superstitious enough (as thank God I am) to hold that creed, shall I not
believe that though this great war had no general upon earth, it may have
had a gen