THE BRITISH EMPIRE WANTS YOUR HELP.
Our great Empire is to-day to the rest of the world very much what the Roman Empire was two thousand years ago. But the Roman Empire, great as it was, fell.
"The same causes which brought about the fall of the great Roman Empire are working to-day in Great Britain."
These words were lately spoken by one of our best-known democratic politicians, and they have been confirmed in a recent lecture at Cambridge by Mr. Warde Fowler, as also in various pamphlets and writings. That they are true is practically admitted by those who have studied and compared the general conditions of both countries.
FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE WAS DUE TO BAD CITIZENSHIP.
Instruction of Boy Scouts. "Boyhood of Raleigh," after Sir J. Millais. From such instruction was a great character formed.
The main causes of the downfall of Rome is similar to that which resulted in the downfall of other great empires, such as the Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Spanish, and Dutch, and that cause may be summed up in each case as the decline of good citizenship and the want of energetic patriotism. Each nation, after climbing laboriously to the zenith of its power, seemed then to become exhausted by its effort, and sit down in a state of repose, relapsing into idleness, studiously blind to the fact that other nations were gradually pushing up to destroy it. It is easy to push historical parallels too far, and whether or not these parallels are real or exaggerated, they give us food for reflection. The main point is for us to take the lesson to heart, and see, before it is too late, that our Empire also be not undermined by these defects.
I am not so pessimistic myself as to think with some people that we are already so far on the downward grade as to be in a hopeless condition. On the contrary, I think that we are only near to the parting of the ways where it becomes incumbent upon everyone of us who has the slightest patriotism in him to earnestly help, in however small a way, to turn the rising generation on the right road for good citizenship.
The aim may seem too big to attain, but most big things are only got by combination of small efforts. A coral island is erected by the work of myriads of sea-insects, the Pyramids of Egypt were the result of co-operation of thousands of workers.