THE SUPREME TERROR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8134, 8 May 1906, Page 7

THE SUPREME TERROR.

In the coarse of some very inter «sting remarks on earthquakes, a ■contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald, who haa plainly had experienoe of Nature's most terrible phenomena, draws attention to the terror whioh an earthquake excites in a man who is courageous at ordinary times. Confronted with an ordinary peril, he will draw upon nis reserve of initiative and daring, BUT WHEN THE SOLID EARTH, the oentre of hiß life, so to speak, begius to tremble, his mental balanoe is upset, and he beomes a shrunken mass of terror In an earthquake at Mentone, of whioh the writer seems to have had persunal experience, a lion-hunter, recognised widely before and einoe as a man of conspicuous courage, was reduced to a condition of abject fear pitiable to witness Self-saoifloe and devotion, this writer would make us believe, thrive no more in time of earthquake than does courage. "In order to give to others, one must first have SECURED SOME VANTAGE ground for oneself; and what is there to surrender in this quaking world where no solitary individual can secure a firm foothold? The spot he occupies may in the twinking, of an eye become a yawning chasm. Why, then, should he yield , it to his friend? lu the impossibility of practising any of the virtues he formerly held dear, he is foroed back on the oontempiaton of his own weakness," Every shred of personal vanity and of personal respect is swept away Bi' THE HORROR of an earthquake. • In one hotel at Mentone men and women swarmed down tne corridors in every stage of dress and undress. One elderly man came out of a bathroom naked, and no one took the slightest notice of him. Women of refinement went about in the streets in their night attire, and some who were fortunate enough to catch the night epxress alighted at Parie clothed like this, with perhaps a great-coat flung over them by ohivalrous fellow passengers. But not even the awfulnesa of the catastrophe, not a sense of pity for the sufferers can oheok the grebd of man and the readiness with whioh he turns his brother's pain to his own profit. No sooner were the houses at Mentone vaoant THAN MARAUDERS appeared on the scene. "One is tempted to Infer that—adopting the teaching of Zbh in 'La Terre'—it is the tendency of an earthquake to draw the mind downward." It 1b a sad picture that is drawn here of the effeot of an earthquake on human virtues, and one can only hope that the fuller accounts of the San Francisco distaster will show that it is possible to be courageous and self-saorlfloing even when the earth is heaving and the buildings tumbling around you.