Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

Fantasy Football Challenge - Library of Books for Football Fanatics

Fantasy Football Challenge presents
Popular Science Monthly

20 of 119

Slavophiles are addicted to the military mania, and this form of their belief is more dangerously reactionary than its ordinary phase. Many of these belong to the bureaucratic caste. Official Russia holds aloft the eagle; human Russia the dove. Official Russia leads the anti-Jewish massacres; human Russia is very little responsible for pogroms. Ignatieff, "Father of Lies," a bureaucrat of the military Pan-Slavic breed, about 1882, began the worst persecutions against the Jews in the last generation, and possibly Pobiedonosteff, the late procurator of the Holy Synod, was the worst offender in this one. The peaceful feelings of the masses of the people, however, do not sanction these outbreaks, and Slavophilism of such a sort is not the philosophy of the Russian heart, no matter how many pogroms may be enumerated. It is therefore to human Russia that one must look for the true feelings of the people; to their faith and deeds, to the humility of their devotions, and prostrations before their numberless shrines and ikons, to their religious ceremonies in the open fields for huge detachments of the army, to the thousands of their yearly pilgrims to Jerusalem, to their superstitions, their poverty and long-suffering, all of which attest innate passive endurance and non-resistance, and show their kind of Slavophilism, which all in all, is much more than "mere reverence for barbarism." The war-time excitement in their cities seemed characteristic of this national soul: "Russia is the Mother of Servia" was the street cry of the marching throngs. It might be added that the word mother, "matushka," is a prevalent one in expressing their feelings. They call their greatest river the "Mother Volga." Conquering Rome said "Father Tiber" and the native warriors of this continent called the Mississippi the "Father of Waters." The difference in these appellations shows the tender quality of the Russian soul, whose ardent sympathies in July, 1914, were greatly aroused by the spectacle of a large nation attacking a small one, notwithstanding whatever may be said to justify that deed. Finally, however, let it be added, that the one thing that will recreate Russia in the image of the west, is capital. Once let the vast sums that have invaded Muscovy be put, not to the autocratic purpose of the official rulers, but into factories, mines, city subways and transportation of all kinds, irrigation, canals, agricultural implements and to other productive uses, then capitalistic Russia will stand forth shorn of the Slavophilic simplicities of non-resistance and humility. Labor wars, practically unknown hitherto, yet now beginning, will occur in much greater number and the peasant class, still unified, will be torn asunder by differences in wealth and interests; the middle class, now very small, will grow to large proportions, and many destructive forces will come upon the land which has hitherto mocked western Europe because of their presence there. The many centuries of peasant unity, with its beauty of brotherhood, affection and communal interests, will come to an end under such a new regime. Already competitive forces are dissolving communism in land, and many of the old beauties of Russia are disappearing. Capitalism will bring with it much turmoil and strife, unhappiness and death, but also the dawn of brighter hours; newer and better cities, cleaner water, better food, houses and clothes, and after the stress of its first attack is over, and Russia has evolved laws and means to control and socialize the invader, it may be that the old simplicities and beauties of life will return, and a greater and holier Russia will arise, still able to teach and aid in the regeneration of the rest of the world. PHYSICAL TRAINING AS MENTAL TRAINING BY DR. J. H. McBRIDE PASADENA, CALIFORNIA THE first duty of a people is to provide for the health of its children. The possible human value of any country fifty years ahead depends chiefly upon what is done by and for its children. They are the future in the making. History seems to justify the statement of Professor Tyler[1] that conquering races have been physically strong races, and that nations have failed when they became degenerate. [1] Growth and Education," J. M. Tyler. Dionysius, speaking of the advantage of virility in a nation, said, It is a law of Nature common to all mankind, which no time shall annul or destroy, that those who have more strength and excellence shall bear rule over those who have less. This law applies equally to individuals. Skill, cunning and reason play their part, but the animal quality of endurance is always back of these and is often decisive in a contest. Darwin said he had difficulty in applying the law of the survival of the fittest to the facts of the destruction of Greece until it occurred to him that in this instance the strongest was the fittest. Civilized people's have been destroyed by ruder races that were physically superior. The children that are now in our schools will take to adult life such foundation as heredity has furnished, with the equipment that society may care to add. We of this day have no greater obligation than to prepare these children mentally and physically for the duties that maturity may bring. man did not escape the physical necessities of the body when he became civilized; the advantages of health are as great to-day as when our forebears lived in tents. Very few of the primitive man's activities are left; what he did regularly and from necessity we do incidentally, and usually for sport, and yet the demands upon the energies of man have not been lessened, they have only been changed in form. Our educational authorities, though in many instances interested in physical development of the young, have not given the subject the important place in their program that it deserves. This is not wholly due to indifference, but largely to their ideals that were derived from classical-ascetic standards. In the medieval ideal the human body was animal and sinful, to be despised and repressed. The mind was said to be the spiritual element in man, representing the immortal part of his nature, and therefore was the only part worthy of attention in an educational system. From the fall of the Roman empire to the

20 of 119 pages. Go to page:

Go to this Book's Directory Page