The age-herald., 1902-04-27

Washington, April 6.-(Special) )-You opportunities of ordinary reading, that when the women of old Sparta, the moth- CTS and the maidens, got war-angry they gave the hair of their heads to their war rior huskands and lovers to be made into bowstrings with which to drive arrows into the more or less muscular figures of Sparta's enemies. You further know that Sparta had a great many enemies. Indeed nobody but Spartan could have any patience with or much respect for Sparta the town was too confoundedly virtuous. To admit the plain truth, the Spartans travelled the road of self-righteousness a very considerable distance before re- sentful world put them out of the virtue business.
 The Spartans were not goody-goody, as we understand the very "good' in our time, because we have unquestionable proof that they would fight. Yet in the higher moral sense they were towards. They were afraid to trust themselves, precisely after the manner of our cow ards nowadays. Fearing avarice and the possible but the then undiscovered power their 1900 to spurious iron dollars to weigh ton. The Spartan bank cashier could not run away with the money of widows and orphans and honest folk gen. orally, nor could any reckless Spartan youth take his sweetheart to an ice cream shop for light refreshments. for he couldn't tote enough money to satisfy had a fully developed system of "charg- ing" things in their shops, and everybody was given credit on the head basis. If man, after being once presented with a bill" didn't settle his account with the tradesman, said tradesman made complaint to the mayor and the mayor ordered the debtors head cut off. But as for treating his sweetheart to Ice cream soda" the proud Spartan youth was as unwilling to have her hear him say to the cashier put that down on me-" as is the youth of this oay in our Western Republic.
 The Spartan youth wore nothing but a shirt with a string tied around the waist and his sweetheart wore her long hair hanging down her back and thin gar ment that parted high up on either side. They were so obnoxiously virtuous that they didn't require much in the way of raiment. In this they differed somewhat from their rival Athenian youths and maidens, who wore so much less than the Spartans that it would be rude to speak about it. e
 The Spartans as a people were what the Scotch call unco' guid, and it follows that they were great humbugs. Take, for example their yarn about Leonidas and his three hundred braves in the pass of Thermopyla. The Spartans said that Leonidas and two hundred and ninety nine of his men were slain. The three hundredth man escaped, and ran to Sparta to tell the tale of disaster, where upon the virtuous Spartans slew him for daring to escape from the enemy. Mod ern research shows that Leonidas had six thousand men in that narrow pass, which could have been held by six Ameri- can soldiers with "Krag' rifles against all of the Persian millions. Leonidas did lose 299 men, but with the other 5701 he
 it out for Sparta.
 But what Is all that Spartan history of over-goodness. self-righteousness and brag to do with Washington letter? Nothing in one sense; great deal in general.
 You have been reading much perhaps about the irrepressible conflict in Wash ington called by the space-killers the social war"-the generic term 'social'' being confused with the specific term Society as written in the restricted sense There is social war everywhere upon the face of the earth, the strenuous strife between the "other half' and that element which shines forth resplendent in purple and fine linen, some of which Is born of the blood and bred in the bone. but much of which comes of and reeks with the stable, the soapboilins and the swinebutchering. Byron said society. in his day presumably, was 'composed of two vast hordes. the bored and the borss." Nowadays it is com posed in part