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Show I NATIONAL DECAY. There are lessons enough to prove to mankind that the accumulation of gold is no guarantee of permanent national greatness. Von Meyer, in his ' History of Chemistry, says that in the reign of j old Rameses II., the Nubian mines yielded $625,- 1 000,000 in gold annually. That was 3,600 years ; ago. That is a sum just about double the world's j total yield in 1903. Rather rich diggings, those ; of Nubia. Considering the facilities for working in those days, it must be acknowledged that the showing is immense. And that was a great old race. They dug great canals, constructed immense im-mense reservoirs and lakes, and, a little later, the pyramids and some splendid cities. They were a martial people, too, and swept over Arabia, Asia Minor and Ethiopia. They carried many of the i arts to a high degree of perfection, invented let- , ters, and traced out the processions of the stars. But somehow, they could not maintain their superiority, they began, as a people, to deteriorate, deterio-rate, and finally sank so low in the scale of nations na-tions aso cease to be the world's concernment. ( What was the matter? We suspect the reason can be found in another historical statement, which is that one hundred thousand men toiled it for thirty years to build the great pyramid, and I that their food consisted chiefly of leeks and on- ! ions. They were mere slaves. There were no comforts for the men, no free schools for the i cfljiJWren, no incentive for men to do their best, j "or even to do well. Generation after generation, j the men were born without hope to lives of unre- - quited toil. No wonder that they deteriorated, no wonder national decay came. In the first pitched battle between armies that history gives a de- 'scription of, the Egyptians, while taking position "'on the field, chanted in solemn measure hymns to ! their gods, but there came a day when they no I longer believed in those gods, when they no r 'longer had either devotion or national pride or j ; patriotism; So they declined, the drifting sands ' 6f the desert invaded their fields and reconverted them into a desert, filled up their canals and reser-I reser-I voirs; their rulers became half barbarians and I their treasures were taken from them. The se- I cret was, there was no respect for nor pity for the I masses of the men and women, and they decayed. I Hope died in their hearts; after that, pride; after j that, love of country; and it will always be so. I Russia for the past thirty years has been trav- eling down the same path; it is not much better j through all southern Europe. It is time that the I; law of might ceased its rule in this world; the I people, after all, are everything, and their welfare I is the one thing that governments should be most I concerned about. Only enlightened homes can I perpetuate a nation. |