Disaster  so  great  would  seem  to  proceed  from  causes
widespread  and  manifold.  But  the  facts  do  not  support
such  large  conclusions.  It  is  illogical  to  attribute  physical
decadence  to  a  race  which  had  but  one  competitor  in
maritime    enterprise,  and   from   which   governments    and


Democracy  and  statesmanship  s

adventurers  of  other  races  could  draw  recruits  for  any
venture,  however  reckless,  where  military  efficiency  was
required.  In  most  of  the  departments  of  life  it  was
intellectually  by  far  the  ablest  race  of  its  time.  It  failed
in  one  of  them — in  the  one  in  which  failure  is  fatal —
politics.  The  Greek  was  a  political  monomaniac.  His
political  ideal  could  only  have  been  realised  permanently
in  a  world  where  all  were  of  equal  ability  and  equal
honesty.  It  was  an  ideal  which  in  practical  life  tended  to
bring  the  second-rate  man  to  the  control  of  the  affairs  of
the  state.
Therein  lay  its  fatal  defect.  The  time  must  come  when
one  of  the  neighbouring  races,  under  the  leadership  of  a
man  or  men  of  first-class  ability,  would  curb  the  liberty
of  a  race  whose  ideal  of  liberty  precluded  that  discipline,
that  subordination  of  the  individual,  which  is  necessary
for  effective  action.  And  the  time  was  not  long  deferred.
