destroyed.  With the break-up of the Karling Empire came chaos once more, and a fresh inrush of savagery:  Vikings from the frozen North, and new hordes of outlandish riders from Asia.  It was the early Emperors of Germany proper who quelled these barbarians; in their time Dane and Norseman and Magyar became Christians, and most of the Slav peoples as well, so that Europe began to take on a shape which we can recognize to-day.  Since then the centuries have rolled by, with strange alternations of fortune, now well-nigh barren, and again great with German achievement in arms and in government, in science and the arts.  The centre of power shifted hither and thither within German lands; the great house of Hohenzollern rose, the house which has at last seen Germany spring into a commanding position in the very forefront among the nations of mankind.

To this ancient land, with its glorious past and splendid present, to this land of many memories and of eager hopes, I come from a young nation, which is by blood akin to, and yet different from, each of the great nations of Middle and Western Europe; which has inherited or acquired much from each, but is changing and developing every inheritance and acquisition into something new and strange.  The German strain in our blood is large, for almost from the beginning there has been a large German element among the successive waves of newcomers whose children’s children have been and are being fused into the American nation; and I myself trace my origin to that branch of the Low Dutch stock which raised Holland out of the North Sea.  Moreover, we have taken from you, not only much of the blood that runs through our veins, but much of the thought that shapes our minds.  For generations American scholars have flocked to your universities, and, thanks to the wise foresight of his Imperial Majesty the present Emperor, the intimate and friendly connection between the two countries is now in every way closer than it has ever been before.

Germany is pre-eminently a country in which the world movement of to-day in all of its multitudinous aspects is plainly visible.  The life of this University covers the period during which that movement has spread until it is felt throughout every continent; while its velocity has been constantly accelerating, so that the face of the world has changed, and is now changing, as never before.  It is therefore fit and appropriate here to speak on this subject.

When, in the slow procession of the ages, man was developed on this planet, the change worked by his appearance was at first slight.  Further ages passed, while he groped and struggled by infinitesimal degrees upward through the lower grades of savagery; for the general law is that life which is advanced and complex, whatever its nature, changes more quickly than simpler and less advanced forms.  The life of savages changes and advances with extreme slowness, and groups of savages influence one another but little.