A MISNOMER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3762, 23 March 1907, Page 2

A MISNOMER.

A correspondent writing to the Hawke’s Bay Herald directs attention to the fact that the word Anglo-Saxon is used in many in stances in which, to Englishmen, it is or ought to be a misnomer and in which to other great people who have helped to make the British Empire what it is to-day, it is a mockery, delusion and a snare. He asks who were the Anglo-Saxons? Were they the primeval occupiers of what we today call Great Britain, or even the occupiers of that land at the dawn of civilisation in Europe ? Emphatically No! When the AngloSaxons came to England, they met with a steady national resistance on the part ol the Celtic Britons such as they had nowhere met before. PEentually the low Dutch tribes of Anglo-Saxons from the borderlands of Germany and Scandinavia did conquer the valorous Britons, but they did not, could not exterminate them. Many thousands of these Celtic Britons were driven into “gallant little Wales,” where their proud descendants still remain to repel the onslaughts and invasion of All Blacks from ’neath the Southern Cross. Many thousands more were driven to their Celtic neighbours in dear Old Ireland, or to their Celtic kinsmen across the borderland of Bonnie Scotland. But even then did the AngloSaxons reign supreme ? Once again, absolutely, No ! After long years of strife in which the Angles tried to exterminate the Saxons and in which the Saxons tried to exterminate the Angles, hordes of Danish pirates made inroads almost in every part ot England, and made settlements along its ’ coasts. Thus, centuries before the Norman Conquest, and so-called ‘ ‘ AngloSaxons” admit it was a Conquest —we have a race of Celtic Britons, Angles, Saxons and Danes occupying England. Every schoolboy knows, as Macaulay cays, what the Norman Conqueror, with his Norman followers did. Why, the Normans’ simply conquered the Anglo-Saxons—that’s what they did. And nearly every duke and belted earl in England to-day is a descendant ot the Norman barons who accompanied King William I. at the time ofthe Norman Conquest! Yet, we are called Anglo-Saxons! When a murderer is hung in Russia, the cable informs us he was a Britisher. He’s “ cne of us” then ! But when a great Irish soldier leads his Scotch and Irish soldiers to victory against the seasoned veterans of France and an Irish military genius combats and defeats, at the battle of Waterloo, the greatest military genius that the world has ever known, we are told, “ The English beat the French.” We’re out of it then ! When a great half-Irish halfScotch President of America like McKinley dies and goes before his Maker, we are assured that a great Anglo-Saxon leader of an AngloSaxon people (save the mark !) has for ever passed away. And to come nearer, when a great football team led by a Scotch man, and in whose ranks are Welsh-Irish, and Irish-Colonial players visit and defeats Australia, the cable tells us, “Englishmen beat Australia.” We’re out of it again ! Yet when that same team comes to New Zealand, and my own, my native land beats it, and beats it with a vengeance, we are assured that New Zealand beats the Britishers, We’re in it again then! These misrepresentations, or, if you will, mistakes, have gone on unchallenged or uncorrected long enough. Britishers for ever, if you like, but Anglo-Saxon never. ’ ’