APPRECIATION OF GREEK 167 



It must not be thought that serious work was altogether 

 neglected. I had and always have had an abiding interest 

 in the Classics since I got fairly going with them. We 

 live in days when materialists want no education that 

 is not of immediate use. They are perhaps right from 

 their point of view ; but who that has ever mastered 

 Greek sufficiently to appreciate the atmosphere and the 

 beauty of it would give up the influence it has exercised 

 over his mind, even though he could exchange that for 

 a thousand items of knowledge more immediately 

 profitable ? 



This vast and terrible war will be written about by 

 historians for all time to come, yet I venture to say right 

 here and I use an Americanism purposely that nothing 

 will ever be written quite so absorbing as what Thucydides 

 wrote about the Athenians and their disastrous failure 

 both by sea and land at Syracuse. Enough of that, how- 

 ever ; I only want to make it plain that sport and folly 

 were not really weighing down the balance. There was 

 fairly solid work in the other scale. 



