governed by its landed aristocracy; the democracy is represented by nine officials, who can veto proposals but bring none forward; the big mercantile, capitalist class is unrepresented and highly dissatisfied; hence riots and continual political intrigue. Meanwhile Britain has got by conquest a world-wide empire. She governs its various parts by generals taken from the aristocracy. There is no effective means of controlling these governors during their time of office; they have armies which they have enlisted themselves; the taxes and supplies of their provinces are in their entire control, and they have further large powers of requisitioning; they have no colleagues in their office, and no permanent officials to control them, and each governor chooses his own staff ; they may have had no previous experience of government, and they have probably never seen their province before. Yet the whole management of it is in their hands, and in the absence of steam or telegraph the government at home can do very little to touch them. They cannot be prosecuted till their time of office has expired, and then they will be tried by their peers. So some of them, being conscientious men, govern well; others plunder their subjects and one or two with wider

aims acquire armies with a view to becoming masters of Britain. At the moment there are three of these; they are rivals, but for the present they have patched up their difference in a meeting at Harrogate, and agreed to a division of power and a certain allotment of the provinces. The government which hates them, but has no army on which to rely, has been forced to consent; and so, in an unstable equilibrium, the world waits uneasily for the clash which is to come.

No parallels are exact; but this not unfairly represents the state of the Roman empire in 56 B.C., when Pompey, Caesar and Crassus parted at the Baths of Lucca. A generation later Augustus had founded a government under which the world was for a space to enjoy prosperity and peace. The problem had been solved, the provinces had a stable, uniform, just and efficient administration, the central government had recovered control.

There we.have a typical instance of what makes Rome so well worth our study. Her history is a succession of colossal political problems-problems of administration at home and abroad, of finance, of army organisation, of militarism and capitalism, of rural exodus and land settlement, of municipal life and colonisation, of increasing luxury and

sterile marriages, problems, above all, of imperial government, of frontiers, of vassal kingdoms, of an adequate civil service, of the unification of empire, of roads and postal systems, of imposing and collecting taxes. On most of these subjects there is no light from Greek history, for the Greek state was a city, and the Greek ȧpxý a toy empire -very different from our world-wide states. We must go to Rome for our lessons. To govern peoples who differ in race, language, temper and civilisation; to raise and distribute armies for their defence or subjection; to meet expenses civil and military; to allow generals and governors sufficient independence without losing control at the centre; to know and supply the needs of provinces two thousand miles from the seat of government, and that without the assistance of telegraph or railway, with horses and sailing ships as the swiftest means of transport; in a word, to organise and administer the Roman empire, is a work as fascinating to study as it was difficult to achieve. And then, the fall of this power-its administrative, military, financial collapse. History has no other instance to shew of the destruction of a highly civilised and highly organised empire, for those who watch her skies for signs of the times.

Latin then stands in our education partly on linguistic grounds, partly on the heroic characters in its history, on the interest of its political and imperial problems, and on the capacities of its people for government; and it is doubly recommended because its genius is complementary to that of Greece. Of the two limbs of the classical education it can be easiest replaced, if we are willing to sacrifice the advantages just mentioned, and with them a full knowledge of the nation that, more than any other, has determined the political thought and institutions of Europe.

CHAPTER V

SOME EDUCATIONAL ADVANTAGES OF THE

CLASSICS

DIE Griechen sind, wie das Genie, einfach; deshalb sind
sie die unsterblichen Lehrer.

NIETZSCHE.

But is not our own literature an adequate substitute for the classics if not an improvement on them? And is there not something to be said for feeding children on their mother's milk, instead of surrendering them to foreign nurses? These are obvious and fair questions to ask, and I propose in this chapter to consider the respective educational merits of ancient and modern literature and to put successively the following questions:

(a) How does our own literature compare with Greek? (This has been to some extent dealt with in Chapter III.)

(b) Is it really better for a nation to be nourished mainly on its own past?