UTOPIAS.

Taihape Daily Times, 23 January 1919, Page 4

UTOPIAS.

It has been remarked in Taihape that universal peace or the permanent cessation of national hostilities is a Utopian „ idea. Without discussing such a».statemcnt we might say that greatest minds in various ages have held thaj; such a condition is possible and attainable, and many have predicted that such a time would come. First, there is the "Sermon on 8 the Mount.v Later Bacon, Whittier and Tennyson have expressed themselves immortally on the subject. These are a wide selection, but it is made designedly to cover a lengthy period. Friar a man much in advance of his time, he no: only hoped for a brotherhood of nations, but he also clearly law what to i?ay we are actually experiencing, and that which inventors are yet engaged in perfecting. He said, "A vessel would be constructed thai "would make more w«*y with one man in her ihan another vessel well manned; a war chariot would move with irresistible force without horses; that it was possible to make an instrument for .Hying, so that a man sitting in the middle thereof could steer his way through the air.. Yea," he said, "instruments may be fabricated by which one man shall draw a thousand men to him by force, and against their will; also to make machines enabling men to walk on the bottom of seas and rivers without danger." He was a man living in iha days of darkness, yet who saw clearJv what might" and would be done. Tennyson ■Seemed to realise'that'the world was on the eve of a constructive era of society when he wrote:

"I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that wouid be. Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic, sails, Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales; Lo! the war-drums throb n-> longer, and the battle-flags are furled, In the parliament of man, the federation of the world." Who will say that Tennyson's vision is not being realised to-day in the parliament of man now sitting to bring about a League of Nations, a. federation of the world? Whittier saw a similar vision, he said: — 'I looked; aside the dust cloud rolled The waster seemed the Builder toe; ITpspringing from the ruin old I saw the new. 'Twas but the ruin of the bad, The wasting of the wrong and 51!; What'er of good the old time had, Was living still.Y Carlysle, in his "Latter Day Pamphlets/' also wrote of a time when all would work for that which sustains life instead of devoting the riches of work to the destruction of H':"e. Whatever men in earlier times may have thought about universal peaes, a parliament of man, a federation of the world, being Utopian, there is no occasion to regard it as Utopian to-day.