Replying to a message of DAVE DRUM to EARL CROASMUN:

 DD> "No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript
 DD> troops and in the long run no state ever has. Roman matrons
 DD> used to say to their sons: "Come back with your shield, or
 DD> on it." Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome." --
 DD> Excerpt from the notebooks of Lazarus Long

Heinlein was wrong, it was Spartan mothers that told their sons to
come back with their shield or on it.  Just a few centuries before
Rome...

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