Are We a Declining Race ? 



More than two thousand years ago the poet 

 Aristophanes said of the Athenians : " In the 

 good old times our youths breasted the snow 

 without a mantle, their music was masculine 

 and martial, their gymnastic exercises decorous 

 and chaste. Thus were trained the heroes of 

 Marathon." 



Isocrates, a great orator of the same period, 

 said : "Thus our young men did not waste their 

 days in the gaming houses, nor with music girls, 

 nor in the assemblies, in which whole days are 

 now consumed." 



The Greeks learned afterwards that the re- 

 proach was only too well founded. 



So it has been with Rome, -with every other 

 great nation, and so it is with us. To every 

 successive generation, similar warnings are 

 addressed. 



The idea, in all classes of society, has frequently 

 been made the subject of song, and in our naval 

 service the contrast between " old navy " and 

 " young navy " was a constant incitement to 

 repartee. 



When, at the close of the Crimean War, large 

 numbers of men were paid off, they sang, and by 

 all accounts with a certain amount of reason 



" They are paying off all our seamen bold, 

 Thinking them they'll want no more, 

 But the Navy never will be manned 

 As it was in fifty-four." 



Twenty years later, there was another clearance 

 of a certain class of men, reckoned "undesir- 

 ables." 



About that time, 1874 or 1875, several altera- 



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