of these miserable wretches will be left alive;
and know, too, that even if they were not to draw the sword,
hunger, exhaustion, or intemperance would make an end of most of
them. Besides, they are not the ones to punish, but rather those
sedentary barbarians who, from the ease and security of their
private apartments, and while their dinner is digesting, order
the massacre of a million men, and then solemnly return thanks
to God for the achievement." The visitor from Sirius is moved
with pity for a race of beings presenting such astonishing
contrasts.--_The Dial_, January 1, 1915.[9]

[9] Reprinted by permission of _The Dial_.

V. Exercises

1. Topics for short speeches: Voltaire; Micromegas; planets;
Sirius.

2. What is the moral of this fable?

3. Discuss the meaning and etymology of "Micromegas,"
"philosophers," "fantasy," "translation," "terrestrial,"
"intellectual," "Czar," "annihilate," "ridiculous," "rejoinder,"
"sedentary."

4. Find in the model one simple, one compound, and one complex
sentence.

5. One loose and one periodic sentence.

6. Two antitheses.

7. Explain in one paragraph the point of some old book of current
interest.

VI. Model III

Theodor Mommsen's "Law of National Expansion," in view of the
present war, is interesting. In his _History of Rome_, which was
published in 1857, he says in substance that a young nation
which has both vigor and culture is sure to absorb older nations
whose vigor is waning and younger nations whose civilization is
undeveloped, just as an educated young man is sure to supplant
an old man in his dotage and to get the better of a muscular
ignoramus. That nations, as well as individuals, should do this
is, in Mommsen's opinion, not only inevitable but right.

In ancient times the Romans were the only people in whom were
combined a superior political organization and a superior
civilization. The result was that they subdued the Greek states
of the East, which were ripe for destruction, and dispossessed
the people of lower grades of culture in the West. The union of
Italy was accomplished through the overthrow of the Samnite and
Etruscan civilizations. The Roman Empire was built upon the
ruins of countless secondary nationalities which had long before
been marked out for destruction by the levelling hand of
civ