"An immense value was placed upon discipline, and as long as it lasted in its iron simplicity the Spartans were the wonder of the then known world.

But after their conquest of Athens, when luxury poured in and every general wanted something for himself and forgot the good of the state, then their discipline went to pieces, and, so--the whole thing.

And that, applied in a modern way, is what is happening to England.

All classes are forgetting their discipline, and, without fitting themselves for what they aspire to, they are trying to snatch from some other class.

And the whole thing is rotten with mawkish sentimentality, and false prudery, and abeyance of common sense." "Yes," said Lady Ethelrida, much interested.
"Lycurgus went to the root of things," the financier continued, "and made the people morally and physically healthy, and ruthlessly expunged the unfit--not like our modern nonsense, which encourages science to keep, among the prospective parents for the future generation, all the most diseased.