THE UNIVERSE AND THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2760, 2 May 1916, Page 7

THE UNIVERSE AND THE WAR

Mlv. CLEMENT WRAGGE'S LECTURE. A lecture which, as to its name and subject matter, had to do with tho great war, was delivered last night m the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall by Mr. Clement Wragge. Tho title was "The Mighty Universe and. tho War." Mr. Wragge opened his discourse with n review of the marvels of radium, and the importance of the discovery as an aid to our understanding of all things terrestrial and celestial. He claimed a gi cat deal for this wonderful substanco. and its miraculous emanations, and he propounded certain theories or statements as generalisations which most men of science would call simply empiricisms, ' interesting or otherwise, according to their several tastes. He reached the subject war by slow but necessary grades—necessary, because of tho perspective in which he asked his bearers to view the awful tragedy. Ho overwhelmed even the most unimaginative with tho vastness of tho known universe. Ho- told first of tfio solar system, our sun and its planets, and in his account of this little system he made use of mathematically accurate, but none the less appalling, -figures to drive home the conception of its vastness. Ho went on to speak of the suns greater than ours, aud then plunged one, by medium of some excellent lantern' slides, 'into a shilling llano of suns, milliards of myriads of suus, such as may be revealed by the greatest telescopo in tho wcrld| not to tho naked eye, hut to a Bonsitivo plate. Having established tho vastness of the "supra" universe, •its evolution, and the suporual grandeur of it all, he took hii audience wicli him for a peep at tho '"infra" universe, tho realm ol the atom, the germ, and tho minute organism, of which thero may bo countless-numbors in a tiny drop of stagnant water, and countless myriads in even a small body of stagnant water I on a small part of this small earth, a tiny satellite of one of the smallest suns in the blaze of the Milky Way. So 110 caiiio to the thought oi tho infinite power ' and greatness of the Master Mind conceiving and controlling it all— and controlling also tho war. First oi all lie-postulates .that, in viewing tiTb war, we should distinguish botween tho absolute and the relative in things and events. ; From this point of view lie considered tho war and its apparont evil. His general idea was that the war had come upon the world becauso i of the sins of the people. Mr. WraggO sees in itho contest a struggle between light and darkness, or, as others might say, between right and wrong, and aa a good' Englishman, ho says that the ideals for which the • English and the Allies are. fighting are the ideals of light. This is the veriest! skeleton of & lecturo, which treats of everything under Heaven, for there are few men moro' ruthlessly destructive of our petted idolsj or moro exoticallv constructive in imaginative flights than Mr. Wragge. Here and there 'ho used paradox and anti-climax with effect, relapsing into tho vernacular to uiako his points the more incisively or his wit tho more piquant. But amongst a great many enunciations of profound wisdom werei some which 'struck tho listener 'as the least bit grotesque. _ After the lecture there) was a special exhibition-of radium, a very valuable exhibit, as Mr. Wragge explained. He demonstrated the wonderful phenomenon called radio-activity, and generally gave another lccturette on this marvel of scionce in this century. Mr. Wragge will deliver a furtho/ locturo this 1 evening.