The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-06-15
PREVENT ADDRESS
 BY PROF. M ARTHA
COMPARES OPPORTUNITY OF MODERN YOUTH TO YOUNG RO. MAN WHO THREW HIMSELF
 INTO THE FIBER TO SAVE ROME.

Greensboro, June 14-(speclal. )-This morning at 10 o'clock occurred the ora torial contest between the two literary societies. The following young gentlemen spoke: T. S. Norwood, s"'rhe Crisis in the Orient" c. c. Daniel, "The United States in Panama;" F. H. Bryant, America Means Opportunity" H F Vaughan. Law Makers and Law Break CTS" All the young gentlemen did wei and the judges will probably have hard time deciding the contest
 The address before the two societies was delivered by Prof. c. L. McArtha of Troy who said:
 Ladies and young gentlemen of the Clariosophic and Bellies Lettres societies, and brethren: There was consternation. awe and terror in the eternal city. While men slept a great chasm had opened in the forum and with the rising sun dense crowd with blanched faces and low murmurs of alright pressed to the edge of the abyss, Cazed into its black depth and gasped.
 "A session of the senate was hastily called and the grave conseript fathers de- liberated as to what the strange prodigy might mean to Rome A procession of priests. pontlffs and augurs headed by the pontfex maximus filed up the Capi- toline to Jupiters temple to seek in- structions from the gods. The answer came. Rome's richest treasure must be thrown Into the gulf, or Rome cannot be saved.
 .The ambiguous oracle brought no re- lief. What Is Romes richest treasurer Ia crowded
 with the grain ships, her trremes and her galleys. Her ponderous walls defy and her massive gates exclude her strongest enemies
 Tn the aerarfa are piled the revenues | from a score of tributary provinces. In her temples are statues and images and l shrines of her holy gods. In her homes are royal tables laden with vestu and chambers filled with all the rich adorn- ings of affluent luxury. In her streets arc memorial monuments, triumphal arches and rostrate columns hung with the trophies of hundred conuuests. Every where are gold and silver, marble and granite inlaid with lapis luzuh and precious gems. All these may be sacrificed to Plato and Rome not saved.
 But harki On the outskirts of the crowd a murmur is heard deepening to q roar, breaking to shout. 'Salve Curtii atavis carissmis edite The thong presses closer together and through the living lane a noble young Roman, armed cap apple, reins his mettesoms war horse to the brink. Wheeling to front the crowd and lifting helmet from his open brow he cries, What richer treasure can state possess than arms and youth prepared to live or die for native land? then set- ting the masque upon his head and elr- culing his unsheathed sword about his plume he spurred and plunged, and Roma was saved.
 Whether this old tradition from the legendary realm be partly true or wholly false it shall point our moral today
 Using this tradition as a basis. the speaker hastily drew vivid picture Sf America's great wealth and influence commercial, financial, industrial and in- tellectual
 The news of yesterday Is ancient history today. But a chasm yawns which threat ems to engulf it all. He hastily sketched legislative jobbery, political trickery. lesalized corruption, social dehlement, do- nestle infdelity. sanctity of law violated. divorce. desecration, irreverence, man. monism.
 No treasure less than q young man armed cap-a-pie with justice, truth pur- ity. patriotism. altrusm can close tho pit and save the nation. The young man of today stands on a narrow ridge divid- .is eiic aii preserving ocedH ot the past from the all containing ocean Of the fu- ture. Nothing has been lost from the material intellectual or fnoras past We have all today to be transmitted down the ages. Americas mission s to save and Christianize the world. She must not fail
 The speaker concluded with arming them with the viw of the twentieth cen- tury knight, and charged him to he the man that's real to speak the word that's true, to do the thing that's right.