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Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 220, 2 October 1940, Page 3

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BEWARE OF PROPHECY WAR HAS NEVER DONE IT "There are those who claim that this Avar will 'end civilisation, and others who believe that the vast upheaval may usher in a new and better world order. A historian may welS beware of prophecy, and 1 prefer to lean heavily on the past rather than to try to penetrate the future," says a writer in the "Spectator." '"First, let us note that if history teaches anything it shows us how tough a creature is man. Individual men and civilisations grow and die, but man and civilisation continue, We arc apt to think of life in terms of,-our oavu and those of our friends, and of 'civilisation' as the particular culture Ave have known and made ourselves at homo in.. "History proves constantly that a group or class instinctively feels' that civilisation and the good of the whole are in danger if its own interests and ways are threatened. It is easy to point to the destructive ness of wars and even how they have overturned civilisations, although not so easy to prove they; were tlve sole cause of the latter.. "It is an open question whether the fall of Rome was due to the entry of the barbarians or whether their entry was due to a deterioration in Rome itself.'"