Page:Demosthenes (Brodribb).djvu/76

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62
DEMOSTHENES.

think the man a formidable foe, looking at the vastness of his present power and our loss of all our strongholds, that is reasonable enough; only you should reflect that there was a time when we held Pydna, and Potidæa, and Methone, with all the adjacent country, and that many of the nations now in league with Philip were independent and free, and preferred our friendship to his. Had Philip then taken it into his head that Athens was too formidable a foe to fight, when she had so many fortresses to threaten his country, and he was destitute of allies, nothing that he has accomplished would he have attempted, and never would he have acquired so large a dominion. But he saw clearly enough that such places are the open prizes of war;—that the possessions of the absent belong to the present, those of the careless to the adventurous who shrink not from toil. Acting on that principle, he has won everything, and keeps it either by way of conquest or by friendly attachment and alliance; for all men will side with and respect those whom they see prepared and willing to make proper exertions. If you will adopt this principle now, though you have not hitherto done so—and if every man, when he can and ought to give his service to the State, be ready to give it without excuse—if the rich will contribute, if the able-bodied will enlist,—in a word, plainly, if you will become your own masters, and cease each expecting to do nothing himself, while his neighbour does everything for him,—then will you, with heaven's permission, recover your own, and get back what has been frittered away, and chastise Philip. Do not im-