Talk:The Dancing Girl of Gades

ERHAPS the following paragraph out of a letter from of our writers' brigade pretty well explains why the controversy over Julius Cæsar has aroused such astonishing interest among those who gather at our Camp-Fire. Not even our discussions of the Gila monster, the Custer battle, tarantulas, Billy the Kid, snakes, snake-bites and Wild Bill have stirred things up so much over a similar period of time!

HERE have been many other comments to the same general effect. Here are several letters that have gone into the matter more fully. The first, from Elmer Davis, was not originally written for publication but is passed on with his consent:

HIS letter deals only with Mr. Mundy's "guess" as to the evolution of the long-boat. Incidentally, to some degree it challenges Mr. Brodeur's statement, made long before the Cæsar discussion arose, that the "winged hats" of the Northmen never existed. Some one, though it may not have been Mr. Brodeur, made the point that the Northman was too wise a warrior to wear anything on his helmet that an enemy could grasp, as that offered additional mark to a weapon. I wondered about that point at the time, having more or less hazy recollections of crested helmets among various nations of various times clear up to the present, and questioning whether crest, horns, wings, etc., might not to some extent offset that disadvantage by being an additional protection. Not that I am inclined to dispute Mr. Brodeur's main point; I don't know enough to do so, for one thing.

HE two following letters have extra interest in that they exemplify very nicely the two opposite types of mind, the conservative and radical, standpatter and iconoclast. Both are rather more militant than we usually hear at our Camp-Fire, though one of them has some warrant in being a reply to an even more militant letter. One of the two letters is even rather abusive. Both, however, are given without modification, for in this discussion of Cæsar one of the most interesting things is the workings of the human intellect when confronted with a difference of opinion—the reactions of the two types of mind mentioned above. Needless to say, the lid is not permanently removed even in the Cæsar argument, but the argument sometimes becomes a heated one and there should be an occasional indication of that fact.

After all, it's only an argument and in the end we'll all be good friends again.

HERE are certain things in the last part of that last letter to which I say a hearty amen.

Here is a letter centering on the extent of Rome's conquest of Britain and on the culture of the Britons of that day:

ND so, for the present, we leave the  Cæsar argument, but I have a feeling that there will be more to come. Which is as it should be.