LUST FOR UNDOING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 March 1940, Page 8

LUST FOR UNDOING

CONSTANTLY RECURRING MENACE.

When I consider how side by side with the divine constructive effort of the human race there runs a spirit of mere destruction, I find it the most incomprehensible department in all the problem of evil, writes Mr Hilaire Belloc in the "Sunday Times.” There arise among, men negative demands, a sort of appetite for ruin, which roars to be satisfied. Ruin through lhe gradual effect of nature makes no such assault upon the soul of man as does this insane business of killing and tearing down and laying waste. The gradual operation whereby things return to that from which, they came has about it something almost of repose. It is inevitable mid in the nature of things. .Ml human creation of wealth is something done against the tide; something winch is of necessity ultimutely doomed. Bui. this lust for undoing. this sort of anarch boast is. I ( say. incomprehensible on any scheme I of philosophy tenable by a sane man.' Yet there il is, perpetually recurrent ini history, ti menace never altogether re-I pelled. a brute novel - wholly or fin-j ally tamed. In all the human story | there stand al the beginning of each new chapter the lieroes, who are also, j after a fashion, gods. These were not | exalte-.I m>v their names made immor-! 10l by courage ttimie. but by the object > M the struggle agsinst which that, .’.mimic’ war deployed. They conquer-j rd t ! -e imi'barit'ii mid the boast.