CIVILISATION TUMBLING DOWN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2302, 14 July 1921, Page 1

CIVILISATION TUMBLING DOWN.

A series of articles on the “Salving of Civilisation” is being published by Mr H. G. Molls. His theme is that civilisation is tumbling down. “There lias been,'’ be says, “ a complete alteration in the range and power of human activities in the last hundred years. Men can react upon men with a rapidity and at a distance that was inconceivable a hundred years ago. This is particularly the ease with locomotion and methods of communication generally. The revolution in locomotion found the United Slates of America :i -fringe of population on the sea margins of a great rich, virgin, empty country info which it desired to expand, and into which it was free to expand. The steamboat and railway seemed to come as a natural part of that expansion. 'They came as unqualified blessings. But into Western Europe they, came as a frightful nuisance. While the limits to the United States have been set by the steamship and tho railroad, the limits to the European Sovereign States were drawn at a much earlier time. They were drawn by the iior.se, and particularly the coach horse, travelling along the high road. All the European boundaries of to-day are impossibly small for modern conditions; and they are sustained by an intensity of ancient tradition and patriotic passion. That is where we stand. The normal inconveniences of the national divisions of Europe in peace time are strangling all hope of economic recovery. Each of these packed and strangulated European countries is obliged, by its blessed independence, to maintain as big an army, and as big a military equipment as its bankrupt condition —for we are all bankrupt —permits. All these Powers are under one urgent necessity to sink those ideas of complete independence that have hitherto dominated them. It is a life-and-death necessity. If they cannot obey it they will all he destroyed.'’