The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-03-21
} THE STORY OF DEMOCRACY
On the Ruins of Rome's Republic Line Of Mighty Emperors Arose
CHAPTER XVI
Copyright 194O for The Waterbury

Copyright 194O for The Waterbury
 Democrat by NEA Service Incl
 The Latin word. Caesar, was a nickname and it meant "the hairy one" It must have applied to one of Caius Julius ancestors, for the hero of the Ides of March, judging by his statues, did not have a super fluous hair on his head.
 All the same, once he had became the most important man in Rome, he gained so greatly in statute that for almost 2000 years after his death, the heads of the German and Russian nations were known as a Kaiser or CZar.
 We usua;:y say that Caesar in- tended to make himself the emperor of Rome, but we forget that an im- perator in the eyes of the Romans at the beginning of our era was something quite different.
 In anc:ent Rome, an imperatOr was the title by which the Roman legionnaires greeted their comman- der-in-chief when he returned from a victorious campaign. Afterwards it became a dignity which the Ro- man senate had the right to be- stow upon a particularly successful general, the highest honor in the state.
 During the days of Augustus (the adopted son of Caesar, when ali the power was finally united in the hands of a single man, the imperator began to be regarded not merely as the head of the army but also as the head of the civil government and thereafter he ac- quired all sorts of other titles, such as princeps (first citizen of the state) and POntifex maximus Gas head of the established religion of Rome) or augustus (the illustrious or the sublime).
 All this was of course utterly un-ROman if we think of the Rome of the simple days of Gin cinnatus, when people considered that being a plain Roman citizen was the highest honor to which any man could aspire.
 But during the many centuries of foreign conquests when the Romans had come into contact with the aristocracies and tryannies of Asia, they had lost most of their former pride in the liberty and free dom of the individual and had been rather impressed by the way in which these foreign dictator could get things done, whereas in their own country, with it's endleSSly de- liberating Senate, it was often com pletely impossible to pass even the simplest of laws and regulations.
 All this again sounds very fa- miliar to us for the same process has been going on right under our noses these last 20 years and has carried us to the point when soon America, as the last bulWark of Democracy, may have to fight for it's life If it does not want to sub init to the will of a foreign dicta- tor.
 And even now, with the sad eX- ample of Europe warning us to stick to our own tried and trusted system of Democracy, there are surpris- ingly large number of people in our own land who, like the Romans of Caesars day, will tell you, well, after all, there is something in this dictator stuff. The trains run on time"
 They forget that the trains in cur own country also run on time, but with infinitely less fuss and circumstance than they do in the dictatOrial lands. But they will only begin to remember this after they have had a couple of years of One-man rule and then it will be too late, for then they won't even be allowed to ride on that train unless by special permission of some absurd little fellow in trench coat.
 Nevertheless, ancient Rome can teach us great deal about the possibilities of establishing and maintaining true form of Demo- cracy among a people who have set out to conquer the world.
 As long as Rome had been a smallish city in which the people