IF CIVILISATION CRASHED

Shannon News, 23 March 1926, Page 4

IF CIVILISATION CRASHED

BACK TO DARK ABI'SS The late Lord Northcliffe often used to maintain that any man ought to be able to get all he had to say upon any subject into one column of reading matter. That his lordship sometimes monopolised two-thirds of a page in his own journals is only one of those little human touches that account for so much of the popularity of really great men (writes "W.K. L.," in the Liverpool Weekly Post'). Without stopping here to argue a very debatable question, I agree that when one column is the extent of your allotted space, anything you may have to say upon any subject must necessarily be concentrated into that circumscribed area. There are occasions however, ~when this can only be accomplished with the active co-operation of the gentle reader—-so much detail has to be left to his i imagination thah he must not only read, but weigh carefully all that the written word implies and covers Such an occasion now arises. We are so accustomed to what is that we are prone to take it for granted, and to forget what went befroe. For example, there are children running about to-day who ;have ; yet to hear of the Great War, just as there are likely youths of, say sixteen, who would not recognise a golden sovereign if;they saw one. Yet these things only take us back to comparatively recent 1914. , What of the beginning of all things What is the origin and meaning of our modern civilisation? In the beginning all men were free They were free to eat' when, where, and what they would, although, in those early days that would only amount to edible roots and berries. They were free to roam where they would ,but if they wandered too far away from a river they might die a horrid death of thirst; whilst sudden death, in the shape of hungry (and thirsty) prehistoric monsters, even threatened them at the riverside. Each man was free to take what he could, and each other man was equally, free to take it from him if he could. Each and every man was a law into himself, butw hen two such lawgivers found themselves at variance one of them generally came to a sticky end. They were free to live ungovrned free to : die unaided, and free to rot unburied. So much for their glorious freedom. The First landlord. In course of time cereals were discovered; and some unknown benefactor began to sjow corn. Whe whole world was then a huge uncultivated , wildrnss, and anybody was welcome to squat upon any piece of land in long as he could hold it. It was not enough to work upon the land in those days; th e would-be tiller of the soil had to be prepared to hold it against all comers. Thus, when our unknown benefactor first sowed corn he would enclose his plot, or, at any rate, stake a claim; and so we come to —the first landlord.

When it was found that flesh could to used as human food anybody could have it for the mere getting. But some men were more expert than others as hunters, trappers, and fish- ' ermen. and thus it happened (as before and since) some lived in plenfly while others had little or even nothing. As time went, on the experts became more expert, andsated with surplus meat, would exchange it for fish or for com. Here then, we meet the first butcher 1 , the first fishmonger, and the first cornchandler. Modern commerce was in the making . Eventually the unsettled state of society, in which every man was for himself, became intolerable. For mutual protection], families handled themselves together and thus became tribes. This put a stop to the gory conflict between individual men, but in place of it, all they got was tribal wars. In the end the warring tribes doubtless fearing mutual extermination amalgamated together the whole of the tribes in the country. Thus we come to the first nation. When first the people got together in tribes, the multitude of counsel was found to lead to stagnation in the arts of peace,'and defeat' and disaster in war. The remedy was duly forthcoming and tribal chaos was banished by election of one supreme head with whom rested the final word in peace and in war. Here we have the first chairman of committee, the first commander-in-chief, the first prime minister, the first king! It is inevitable.

One summer's day some prehistoric genius, i observing a health fire caused by the heat of the sun, reflected how nice it would be to sit by such a fire —in winter time. That was the beginning of fire as the servant of man Possibly it was by torturing prisoners at the stake that the idea of using fire to cook food was first conceived Here we ;find the original ancestor of Mrs. Beeton, and the foster parent of eating-houses, cafes, restaurants, hotels, and other queer fowl. With the final application of fire to crude metals, we see the birth of the tremendous iron, steel engineering, mining, and shipbuilding industries of to-day. ■ The Lazy Animal. In the beginning, if a man wanted to get from here to there, he walked But man is an incurably lazy animal in that respect, and ever sought for other means of locomotion. When tribal wars brought slaves, he caused himself to be carried on some rude form of stretcher or palanquin. Asses camels,, elephants, and oxen were later pressed into service, until somebody invented the first wheel. Then we had carts, then carriages .then stage coaches, then the plebeian omnifous. Then came railways, to be followed by motors, and thus we arrived at that tangled modern problem \ —transport. Now. imt aa the expert hunter be-

gun to specialise'in the hunting, killing and bartering of his meat, so the [ game o fspecialisation Went on, and l-to surprising lengths. To-day cattle are not hunted. They are carefully and scientifically bred and reared by stockbreeders and farmers; they are mothered and tended by veterinary surgeons; they are sold by auctioneers having special knowledge of such • sales; they are transported in special trucks by the railways; they 1 are killed by slaughterers, carted by vanmen refrigerated by cold storage experts > and eventually retailed in joints by a "butcher" who wouldn't know how to slaughter beast,, even if he could find it in his heart. It is the same in every direction The man who made the first boot was a complete and self-supporting unit in. a world of barter. ». But the individual who machine-stitches the uppers of your boots would find his occupation gone we're it not for those several others concerned, both before and after those uppers were stitched Each is ncessary, the one to the other The days are gone when any man can stand alone.

At every turning.we prove this. We strike a match and immediately there is a flame. We turn a taj>, and .'straightway water gushes forth in abundance. We press a switch, and light is forthcoming. We lift the I receiver an dtalk to people we can- | not see who may be scores of miles ! away. We give the baker a few coppers and the prime produce of the i American wheatfields, ft-fter passing through the hands of scores of contributory agents, is handed to us in the compact shape of a crusty loaf. And when we would be amused .or entertained, but are too lazy to go to a theatre or a concert, hey presto! we just pick up the headphones and there we are! A TERRIFIC "IF." ' An astonishing thing this civilisation of ours. A terrible thing it might prove too, if any serious hitch happened to the complicated machinery of production and distribution. If the turning of the tap ever fails to produce water, town-bred civilisation has only three short days to livebarring a miracle. Even such a seemingly small majtters a%matches nowadays? Civilisation may be either a blessing or a curse; but, in any case, I really don't see that we have any option but to get on with it Primitive man had to take the world as he round it and make the best of it. What that best could accomplish I have endeavoured to show for tho consideration of readers in this remarkable age of wireless, the dole, how could we get on without them cup ties, and —organised discontent.