The Holbrook news., 1911-12-15

IdtSeQ tue EdSlS or LIS leBlOus anu then jumped into the water.
 Follow me, my comrades he cried. ''if you would not see your Eagle taken by the enemy. If die I shall have done my duty to Rome, and to my general" So the old story goes, familiar to every schoolboy, and re- membered, perhaps, by that soldier who stood at the salute in Kensington Gardens
 But whatever stories we may weave about the boat that has been dug up from the London mud after nineteen hundred years or so, at least 1t has come to us as a reminder of the civili- zation which was enthroned upon the Thames at London, which carved great roads through the forest lands. which built temples and palaces, baths and terraced gardens, fortified camps and strong walls, north and south. east and west, in this island of ours. before England" had a name in history. They did their work well, those Romans, and though fifteen hun dred years have passed since the last of them went away into the ghost world. leaving Britain prey to savage hordes. leaving their temples and their terraces to be the hiding places of wolves until the stones fell among the tangled weeds, England has still many memorials of their rule. Our motor cars speed upon the highways down which the Roman legions marched. Straight from London to Chester goes Waiting street. and the Posse way from Bath to Lincoln. Err mine street Is still a high road from London to York, and the "Via Mariti- ma" (the seaside road) still winds it's way along the sea coast of Wales to Pembrokeshire.
 Hardly a year passes but a blow turns up pot full of coins which bear the image and the superscript1on of Claudius or Constantine, or some great emperor whose edicts carried as far as this misty isle. The peasants spade unearths a tesselated pavement which formed the floor of a Roman gentleman's villa, or a stone rudely carved by a Roman soldier who in- scribed his homage to Mars or Diana and the old gods in whose worship he found courage and beauty. Britain was no mere outpost of empire held precariously by a little garrison among hostile tribes. It was a Roman province, where for nearly four hun dred years the Roman law ruled. and a civilization noble and strong and beautiful in its well-ordered system was raised among a conquered people, who yielded, after the first struggle, gladly to their conquerors. It is not difficult to reconstruct that Roman civilization in Britain, to conjure up the picture of that civil life in such cities as Bath, and York, St. AIbans and Lincoln. where stones of Roman buildings are found in the walls of Norman churches and English battle ments. The officers of Vespasian and Severus, Titus and Constantine, were gentlemen of Roman dignity and valor, and their life in Britain reflected the spIendor, the, luxury and the beauty that they had known in the imperial city.
 Most of us have forgotten those things. Yet they have a moral for a race which has founded an empire greater than that of Rome, and, like the Romans. has given its law to many far colonies. The Roman empire has perished, for after strength came weakness, and the seeds of vice and luxury were reaped in a harvest of de- struction. How is. it with us in im- perial London? There are some who hear the distant rumbling of new world forces beating against the fab rio of our imperial system. The world changes, and no man may foreten the things that are to come. But always we may look back and learn the moral of the past. and listen to the voices that speak from old graves.
 PHILIP GIBBS.