LOOKING BACKWARD

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 7, 9 January 1932, Page 10

LOOKING BACKWARD

When the present is difficult and the future lapks attraction, humanity is finding interest and relaxation in looking backward. "There is nothing new under the sun," said the ancient Preacher; but it is surprising how old some things are. A recent copy of the weekly edition of "The Times" gave three illustrations. One was a description of the English Fen country where the Romans built a bank^ nearly sixty miles long, high and strong enough to keep out the highest tides of the Wash, which rise almost 28 feet.! The old Roman Bank can still be traced, and for considerable stretches, after more than a thousand years, it is still the only means of keeping out the sea. Also the system of draining the Fens today is based on that adopted by the Romans. The second illustration was an account of four years' excavation at Herculaneum, where patient diggers are bringing to the light the city that has been buried for eighteen and a half centuries. It is revealed as a tranquil city, a leisured suburban retreat, with much less of,animated public life than the neighbouring Pompeii.

The last illustration carried readers back many thousands of years before Roman Britain and before buried Herculaneum, to the time of Sinanthropus, the Peking man. The item was a summary of the conclusions of the Chinese Geological Society concerning the Peking man. Briefly, it recorded the view that Sinanthropus knew the use of fire and was able to handle stone implements with considerable skill. In the opinion' of a French palaeontologist he must have had a much more primitive fore-runner. From the primitive fore-runner to Sinanthropus and from Sinanthropus to the Manchurian imbroglio the changes defy all efforts of imagination. The greatest changes a New Year may bring are trivial by comparison.