ARMS AND THE MAN

Hokitika Guardian, 15 October 1928, Page 8

ARMS AND THE MAN

“] wish that more of these clever young fellows would learn Greek,” said a testy old doctor once. “Then they would not grow so excited over brand-new discoveries that were really made by Hippocrates or Galen or some one else who had been dead for twenty centuries or so.”

Nearlly 2000 years have passed since Lucretius put the heart of the evolutionist philosophy into his verse, hut it is only recently that modern science has caught up to him. in a wonderful bit of anthropology Lucretius pointed out that the weapons of really primitive man were hastily gathered stones or clubs hastily made of limbs torn from trees. These, or something very like them, were his tools, too. As he made progress his weapons grew ever more complex and more effective, just as his tooljS did. Science has given us all kinds of inventions unknown to our ancestors. It has. too, —armed the burglar and tire ruffian with quick-firing revolvers, with oxy-acetylene lamps and other aids unknown to their simpler forerunners. There could be no razor gangsters among the simple savages of old Oregon, who laboriously pulled out the hairs of their faces with rude tweezers. To-dav the razor is a deadly weapon in a skilled hand.

Just as the very progress of civilisation has added new horrors to war. so it has added new dangers and new possibilities of evil peace. In a r years the motor car has become indispensable. yet the death-roll of the motor is ever growing, and in many cases ime car has been a potent aid to crime. It is obviously impossible to turn the world backwards. What has to he done it to see that the new weapons given by civilisation arc not abused. “Svdiiev Paper.”