A TIMELY REMINDER.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 January 1939, Page 4

A TIMELY REMINDER.

an i ]na gi na 6ve writer, Mr. JI. G. Wells has made many bold flights and has painted some wonderful pictures of human life and organisation in future ages. In his observations to the Science Congress at Canberra on the immediate outlook for humanity, Air. Wells was not so much speculating as dealing with visible facts when he said that, unless humanity made a mighty effort of adjustment, it

could not escape either self-destruction as a species, or modification into a more wary, combative, malignant type, tough and haidhearted enough to maintain itself for a longer or shorter age on a war-devastated planet.

We are at least within sight of this appalling state of affairs. Largely on account of the undivided concentration ol the totalitarian States on war and preparation for war, the whole world is being converted into a Avar mafthine. The dictatorships frankly worship militarism and make all tilings besides subordinate to military power. The democracies and other nations desiring to live at peace are concentrating more and more on military preparation because they see no better pvay of making themselves secure. In these conditions standards of brute force are being imposed on all humanity. The full implications are a little less obvious as yet in the Li itish Kinpire, the United States and countries 01. continental Lutope that are still free than, for example, in China and in Spain, but the prospect of a war-devastated planet suggested by Mr. Wells cannot be called at all far-fetched. Undoubtedly the mighty effort of adjustment ol Avhich he spoke is supiemely demanded. Standing loyally together, the great democracies even now might set a new and happier course lor humanity, but it has yet to appear that they are capable ol the united concentration on essentials that would enable them to dispel the blight, of Avar from the world. The irony of the existing situation is that the imperfect measure of organisation for peace that had been achieved, with the League of Nations as its focal point, has been alloAvcd to Avither aAvay as the clangei ol general and world-desolating' war has been intensified.