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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: Lacedaemon, as you will bear us witness; but this we say:--If we
helped the Lacedaemonians vigorously in the past, everything tends to
show that we shall help you still more vigorously to-day; for our
swords will be unsheathed, not in behalf of islanders, or Syracusans,
or men of alien stock, as happened in the late war, but of ourselves,
suffering under a sense of wrong. And there is another important fact
which you ought to realise: this selfish system of organised greed
which is Sparta's will fall more readily to pieces than your own late
empire. Yours was the proud assertion of naval empire over subjects
powerless by sea. Theirs is the selfish sway of a minority asserting
dominion over states equally well armed with themselves, and many
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