The Kalispell bee. [volume] (Kalispell, Mont.) 1900-192?, 1900-08-14
Will America Fall Like Rome.

In the very zenith of it's prosperity
and power the Roman republic, after the
complete destruction of Carthage, Rome's
only rival, in turn because victim of its
own wealth and splendor. The city of
Rome, having sprung from mere town
of brick, grew to be city OF marble
palaces. It could boast of 400 temples,
five theaters, two amphitheaters, seven
circuses of vast extent, 16 public baths,
IA aqueducts, besides pillars, triumphal
arches, porticos, lofty obelisks and broad,
well-paved highways, like Via Appia.
But then it began to weaken, for out of
it's very prosperity and riches, out of it's
monstrous debauchery and it paralleled
incontinence, grew vice and heartless
ness. By this very opulence it fell into
decay.
During the centuries of it's struggle
and growth, which of course was slow
compared with this age of steam and
electricity, the people submitted their
political destinies to the rule of kings,
councils or praetors, decemvira, dicta
tors, triumvirates and emperors. These
governments were all more or less repub
lican in form. But the people themselves
fell into corruption and dishonesty.
When subsequently the once noble
Romans exceeded in RIGHTEOUSNESS and
voluptuous extravaganza the Greeks be-
fore them, their country and their gov
eminent became doomed, until finally
came their downfall, which has no paral-
lei in nations.
Rome, rich in the splendor of the Au-
GUSTAV age, was founding libraries, es-
tablishing museums and bringing forth
poets, orators and statesmen, but Rome
fell.
Have we not really at present drifted
unknowingly back to kind of refined
barbarism? What is the difference be-
tween the ancient barbarism, when the
physically strong simply took by force
what they wanted from the physically
weak and then exacted tribute from
them, and the barbarism of the present
day, when a perverted civilization has
created powerful class which now dom
mates for the same ends with all the
weapons of nature and science over the
less fortunate and weak?
In the olden time it was the battleaXe
and the sword alone in the hands of or
ganized barbarians, while now it is the
combined power of wealth of electricity,
af steam, of commercial, mechanical and
political skill, and of the trickery and
heartless, greedy and avaricious, though
civilized barbarians.
Have we not in the present state of
civilization arrived at a point where the
change for fairer and more just order
of things must be inaugurated in our
own country. Are we not at present well
| nigh upon the last reef-at the very edge
of the abyss-where the republican gov
ernments of other peoples history met
their destruction?
It may be Justly insisted that unless
the American people awake now it will
soon be too lat to turn back, and then
the terrible consequences cannot be fore
seen. If the people elect Mckinley in
November the final plunge into world
politics, imperialism and militarism, with
all the denial of self government neces-
sarily involved, will have been taken.
The republic will be undermined. The
halt must be called now or it can never
be made until after a frightful waste of
the best blood of the nation. Every
loyal American citizen, be he native or
foreign born, must believe in liberty and
the right of self government. He must
stand for pure republic first and for
ever. He must oppose everything which
tends toward it's dissolution.-Chicago
Chronicle