Rome, successful in her gigantic battle for life against Carthage, was “a nation so cowardly that she had to destroy her enemy,” and she is again “a cowardly victor” on page 268. (Mr. Wells understands so little of Paganism that he seems to think Carthage would have spared Rome.) She proceeds to “an ungracious expansion of power abroad,” and the whole great age of our foundation is one (p. 269) of “general grim baseness.” The Senate, on page 270, is “a Senatorial gang,” in which Cato (who occupies an absurdly exaggerated place) especially shows “interest and natural malice.” On page 271 you get “pitiless greed,” and meanwhile, of course, “the military efficiency of the Romans had been steadily declining”—but, indeed, the singular incapacity, not only of the Roman people, but of all soldiers, for war is one of Mr. Wells’s standing grievances. The Senate, on the first failure against Carthage, passed “from a bullying mood to one of extreme panic.” On page 273 we have a pleasant contrast between the horrid ignorance of the Roman citizens and the enlightenment of the modern British Trade Union leaders, the latter of whom have done what no Roman ever thought of doing: to wit, started a Labour College. On page 273 Rome is “subcivilized.” It is compared to “Neanderthal man”; its religion “carries us far back beyond the days of decent gods to the age of Shamanism and magic”; and there is a moving contrast between the antique leader searching the entrails of animal victims after a sacrifice for augury, and the more dignified gestures of a British Lord Chancellor. On page 274 Rome is again “Neanderthal”; and on page 275 there is yet another contrast between the gladiatorial shows and our own more humane sports—though there is no actual mention of either football or golf. It reminds one a little of the famous remark of the old lady who was seeing the death of Cleopatra on the stage, and said, “How different from the home life of our own good Queen Victoria”!