At this writing the first line of defense against the Oriental deluge is endangered.  The Slav individually and in his primitive culture is altogether charming.  He is a son of the soil, picturesque in life and creative; he is minstrel and poet, seer.  But so far he is the carrier of a low civilization, the prophet, priest, and king of autocracy and absolutism.  Never has there been a time in history when the higher civilization was not in a savage struggle for existence.  It is almost the first time in three centuries that the highest civilizations were in alliance with the lowest; not since the pugnacious Western powers of Europe sued for favor at the Sublime Porte.

In Peril of the Whirlwind.

This ought to be a very sobering spectacle, but it seems to arouse the delighted enthusiasm of an American majority.  For such an aberration there is but a single and efficient remedy:  absorption in our own affairs, the discriminating study of efficient methods to prevent our being caught up by a whirlwind, even the outer edges of which may snatch us into the vortex.

To change the metaphor, we revel in the pleasant propulsion of the maelstrom’s rim, unaware that every instant brings us closer to dangers, escape from which would demand herculean effort.  Irresponsible emotions are, like those of the novel and the stage, when intensified to excess utterly incompatible with action.  And just such a paralysis seems for six long weeks to have lamed the highest powers of America.

The proportionate increase in population among the European powers is overwhelmingly in favor of the Slavs.  Their rate of increase by natural generation is nearly three times that of even the Germans, with the result that by the introduction of enforced military service into Eastern Europe, (excepting Hungary and perhaps Rumania,) the military balance of power has been completely changed.

The wars among the Balkan States, including Turkey, have put on foot armies of a dimension hitherto undreamed of among the South Slavs, and the army of Russia is probably two and a half times larger than it could have been thirty-five years ago.

The method by which Eastern Europe has succeeded in financing itself is rather mysterious.  We know, of course, that the original Franco-Russian Alliance was based on reciprocal interests, and that large sums of French money flowed into Russia, which partly developed the natural resources of Russia and were partly in the shape of loans that in all likelihood were used for war material.

Slavs in Germany.

The conflict between the Slavs and the Teutons all along the line on which they border has therefore been in two ways intensified.  In the first place, just in proportion as Germany has become an industrial State, the field work has been intrusted to immigrant Slavs, some of whom come only for the season and return, but a very large number of them—­estimated at the present moment at close to a million—­have substantially settled within the borders of the German Empire.  That is to say, there is a constant injection of 1-1/2 per cent. of Slavic blood into the territories of the German Empire.