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Scalawag on the Web Sectory 04
Page 11
Further, our student must submit to a thorough grounding in world-geography with its physical and human sides welded firmly together. He must be able to pick out on the map the headquarters of all the more notable peoples, not merely as they are now, but also as they were at various outstanding moments of the past. His next business is to master the main facts about the natural conditions to which each people is subjected--the climate, the conformation of land and sea, the animals and plants. From here it is but a step to the economic life--the food-supply, the clothing, the dwelling-places, the principal occupations, the implements of labour. A selected list of books of travel must be consulted. No less important is it to work steadily through the show-cases of a good ethnological museum. Nor will it suffice to have surveyed the world by regions. The communications between regions--the migrations and conquests, the trading and the borrowing of customs--must be traced and accounted for. Finally, on the basis of their distribution, which the learner must chart out for himself on blank maps of the world, the chief varieties of the useful arts and appliances of man can be followed from stage to stage of their development.
He was getting, however, by these means, very deeply involved in debt; and, in order partly to retrieve his fortunes in this respect, he made an attempt to have Egypt assigned to him as a province. Egypt was then an immensely rich and fertile country. It had, however, never been a Roman province. It was an independent kingdom, in alliance with the Romans, and Caesar's proposal that it should be assigned to him as a province appeared very extraordinary. His pretext was, that the people of Egypt had recently deposed and expelled their king, and that, consequently, the Romans might properly take possession of it. The Senate, however, resisted this plan, either from jealousy of Caesar or from a sense of justice to Egypt; and, after a violent contest, Caesar found himself compelled to give up the design. He felt, however, a strong degree of resentment against the patrician party who had thus thwarted his designs. Accordingly, in order to avenge himself upon them, he one night replaced certain statues and trophies of Marius in the Capitol, which had been taken down by order of Sylla when he returned to power. Marius, as will be recollected, had been the great champion of the popular party, and the enemy of the patricians; and, at the time of his down-fall, all the memorials of his power and greatness had been every where removed from Rome, and among them these statues and trophies, which had been erected in the Capitol in commemoration of some former victories, and had remained there until Sylla's triumph, when they were taken down and destroyed. Caesar now ordered new ones to be made, far more magnificent than before. They were made secretly, and put up in the night. His office as aedile gave him the necessary authority. The next morning, when the people saw these splendid monuments of their great favorite restored, the whole city was animated with excitement and joy. The patricians, on the other hand, were filled with vexation and rage. "Here is a single officer," said they, "who is attempting to restore, by his individual authority, what has been formally abolished by a decree of the Senate. He is trying to see how much we will bear. If he finds that we will submit to this, he will attempt bolder measures still." They accordingly commenced a movement to have the statues and trophies taken down again, but the people rallied in vast numbers in defense of them. They made the Capitol ring with their shouts of applause; and the Senate, finding their power insufficient to cope with so great a force, gave up the point, and Caesar gained the day.
With regard to the assuring of these friendly relations, the German Government believes that it may all the more reckon on a full understanding with the United States, as the procedure announced by the German Admiralty, which was fully explained in the note of the 4th inst., is in no way directed against legitimate commerce and legitimate shipping of neutrals, but represents solely a measure of self-defense, imposed on Germany by her vital interests, against England's method of warfare, which is contrary to international law, and which so far no protest by neutrals has succeeded in bringing back to the generally recognized principles of law as existing before the outbreak of war.
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