The Green Forest tribune., 1910-06-10

sense from that in which we use it when speaking of the new states that grew up around Warsaw. Kief, Novgorod, and Moscow, as the wild savages of the steppes and the marshy forests struggled haltingly and stumblingly upward to become builders of cities and to form stable governments. The kingdoms of Charlemagne and Alfred were new" compared with the empire on the Bos- phorus; they were also in every way d;f- ferent; their lines of ancestral descent had nothing in common with those of the polyglot realm which paid tribute to the Caesars of Byzantium; their social prob lems and aftertime history were totally different This is not true of those new" nations which spring direct from old na- tons. Brazil, the Argentine, the United States, are all new" nations, compared with the nations of Europe but with whatever changes in detail, their civiliza- tion is nevertheless of the general Euro- pean type as shown in Portugal, Spain, and England. The differences between these new" American and these "old'' European nations are not as great those which separate the new nations one from another and the "old" nations one very real differences between the new and the old nation-differences both for good and for evil; but in each case there is the same ancestral history to reckon with. the same type of civilization, with it's at tendant benefits and shortcomings; and, after the pioneer stages are passed, the problems to be solved, in spite of superf- clal differences, are in their essence the same; they are those that confront all civilized peoples, not those that confront peoples struggling from barbarism into civilization.
 So, when we speak of the death" of a tribe, nation or civilization, the term hn sad fA, ntN Nl,1,, f.fD 11rr different processes; the analogy with what occurs in biological history being complete. Certain tribes of savages, the Iasman1ans, for instance, and various lit tie clans of American Indians, have within the last century or two completely died out; all of the individuals have perished, leaving no descendants, and the blood has disappeared. Certain other tribes of Indians have tribes disappeared or are now disappearing; but their blood remains, being absorbed into the veins of the white intruders, or of the black men introduced by these white intruders; so that in reality they are merely being transformed into something absolutely different from what they were.
 A like wide diversity in fact may be covered in the statement that a civillza- tion has "died out.
 Phenomena That Puzzle.
 In dealing, not with groups of human beings in simple and primitive relations, but with highly complex, highly special ized, civilized. or semi-civilized societies. there is need of great caution in drawing analoSies with what has occurred in the development of the animal world Yet even in these cases it is curious to see how some of the phenomena in the growth and disappearance of these com pleX, artificial groups of human beings htoN1 1ta -1,nt of instances in the history of life on this planet.
 Why do great artificial empires. whose citizens are knit by a bond of speech and culture much more than by a bond of blood, show periods of extraordinary growth. and again of sudden or lingering decay? In some cases we can answer readily enough; in other cases we can- not as yet even guess what the proper answer should be. If in any such case the centrifugal forces overcome the cen tripetal, the nation will of course fly to pieces, and the reason for it's failure to become a dominant force is patent to every one The minute that the spirit which finds Its healthy development in local self-government. and in the antidote to the dangers of an extreme centraliza- tion, develops into mere particularism, into inability to combine effectively for achievement of a common end, then it is IOBeleSS to expect great results. Poland and certain republics of the western hemisphere are the standard examples of failure of this kind: and the United States would have ranked w1th them, and it's name would have become a byword of dersion, if the forces of union had not triumphed in the civil war So the growth of soft luxury after it has reached a certain point becomes national danger patent to all. Again. it needs but little of the vision of seer to foretell what must happen in any community if the average woman ceases to become the mother of a family of healthy children if the average man loses the will and the power to work up to old age and to fight whenever the need arises. If the homely, commonplace virtues die out. if strength of character vanishes in graceful self-indulgence if the virile qualities atrophy, then the nation has lost what no material prosperity can offset.
 But there are plenty of other phenom- ena wholly or partially ineXplicable. It is easy to see why Rome trended downward when great save-tilled farms spread over what had once been a countryside of peasant proprietors, when greed and lux ury and sensuality ate like acids into the fiber of the upper classes, while the mass of the citizens grew to depend not upon their own eXertions but upon the state, for their pleasures and their very livel- hood. But this does not explain why the forward movement stopped at different times. so far as different matters were concerned; at one time regards litera- ture, at another time as regards architec- ture, at another time regards city building. We cannot even guess why the springs of one kind of energy dried up while there was yet no cessation of an- other kind.
 Holland as an Example.
 Take another and smaller instance. that of Holland. For period covering a little more than the seventeenth century, Holland, like some of the Italian city states at an earlier period, stood on the dangerous heights of greatness beside na- tions so vastly her superior in territory and population as to make 1t inevitable that sooner or later she must fall from the glorious and perilous eminence to which she had been raised by her own indomita- ble soul. Her fall came; it could not have been indefinitely postponed; but it came far quicker than it needed to come because of shortcomings on her part to which both Great Britain and the United States would be wise to pay heed Her government was singularly ineffective, the decentralization being such as often to permit the separatist, the particularist spirit of the provinces to rob the central authority of all efficiency. This was bad enough. But the fatal weakness was that so common in rich, peace-lovng societies where men hate to think of war as possi- ble, and try to justify their own reluctance to face 1t either by high-sounding moral platitudes or else by a philosophy of short-sighted materialism. The Dutch were very wealthy. They grew to be- lieye that they could hire otbers to do