INVENTIONS FROM AFAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 May 1938, Page 9

INVENTIONS FROM AFAR

USED HOURLY BY AMERICANS. More and more nations are seeking to live by themselves alone, as if they owed nothing to others and needed nothing from them. Germany would be a Hundred Per Cent Nordic, whatever that may mean, and America loves to be a Hundred Per Gent American. What nonsense it all is. An American scientist, Mr Ralph Linton, has been chaffing his fellowcountrymen on their lack of originality. So far from being 100 per American, they are every day and every hour using inventions from afar. Thus, the typical American goes to bed in pyjamas, an Indian garment. In the morning he glances at the clock, invented in medieval Europe, and goes to a bathroom supplied with hot water after the ancient Roman fashion, and tiled with ware invented in the Near East. He shaves, imitating the priests of Egypt and patricians of Rome, while he washes in soap invented by the Gauls and dries himself on a Turkish towel. Our Modern next clothes himself in garments\derived from ancient nomads , and'fastens them with buttons from the Stone Age. He inserts his feet in stiff boots made from hide cured by an ancient Egyptian process. He gives himself a final look over in the mirror, an old Mediterranean invention, and so to breakfast. Here his food and drink are placed before him in vessels, the popular name for which—china— betrays their origin. His fork is a medieval Italian invention and his spoon a copy of a Roman original.

His coffee (descendant of an Abyssinian plant) is accompanied by an orange, domesticated in the Mediterranean. Follows a bowl of porridge made from grain domesticated in the Near East. Then he will go on to waffles, a Scandinavian invention, with butter, originally a Near Eastern cosmetic.

Breakfast over, he takes a stroll in his garden and picks for a button hole a small chrysenthemum which is a native of China. Back in his house, he dons a piece of felt, invented by the nomads of Eastern Asia, and sprints for his train, an English invention. He takes an umbrella, invented in India. At the station he buys his newspaper with coins invented in ancient Lydia. Then he inhales the fumes of a cigarette invented in Mexico, or a cigar invented in Brazil. Meanwhile our American reads the news, printed in characters invented by the ancient Semites by a process invented in Germany on paper invented in China.

As he scans the latest editorial pointing out the dire results to American institutions of accepting foreign ideas he will not fail to offer thanks in an Indo-European language that he is a one hundred per cent (decimal system invented by the Greeks) American (from Amerigo Vespucci, the Italian voyager). Thus it is with all of us; we are very clever indeed, for we inherit a host of world inventions.