In the last days of the Republic, Cæsar was the leader of the mob, the Plebs, which by that time had ceased to be of Roman blood. Pompey’s party represented the remnants of the old native Roman aristocracy and was defeated at Pharsalia not by Cæsar’s plebeian clients but by his Nordic legionaries from Gaul. Cassius and Brutus were the last successors of Pompey and their overthrow at Philippi was the final death blow to the Republican party; with them the native Roman families disappear almost entirely. The decline of the Romans and for that matter of the native Italians began with the Punic Wars when in addition to the Romans who fell in battle a large portion of the country population of Italy was destroyed by Hannibal. Native Romans suffered greatly in the Social and Servile Wars as well as in the civil conflicts between the factions of Sylla, who led the Patricians, and Marius who represented the Plebs. Bloody proscriptions of the rival parties followed alternately the victory of one side and then of the other and under the tyranny of the Emperors of the first century also the old Roman stock was the greatest sufferer until it practically vanished from the scene. Voluntary childlessness was the most potent cause of the decline under the Empire and when we read of the abject servility of bearers of proud names in the days of Nero and Caligula, we must remember that they could not rally to their standard followers among the Plebs. They had only the choice of submission or suicide and many chose the latter alternative. The abjectness of the Roman spirit under the Empire is thus to be explained by a change in race. With the expanding dominion of Rome the native elements of vigor were drawn year after year into the legions and spent their active years in wars or in garrisons, while the slaves and those unfit for military duty stayed home and bred. In the present great war while the native Americans are at the front fighting the aliens and immigrants are allowed to increase without check and the parallel is a close one. Slaves began to be imported into Italy in numbers in the second century B. C. to work the large plantations—latifundia—of the wealthy Romans. This importation of slaves and the ultimate extension of the Roman citizenship to their manumitted descendants and to inferior races throughout the growing Empire and the losses in internal and foreign wars, ruined the state. In America we find another close parallel in the Civil War and the subsequent granting of citizenship to Negroes and to ever increasing numbers of immigrants of plebeian, servile or Oriental races, who throughout history have shown little capacity to create, organize or even to comprehend Republican institutions.