RETROGRESSION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 April 1941, Page 3

RETROGRESSION

“SIGNS ARE UNMISTAKABLE.” It’s my opinion that the world is going back, drifting unconsciously toward barbarism. We’ve reached a certain stage, we’ve rounded the peak of civilisation; and now we’re set backward. We’re degenerating, or simplifying, whichever way you like to state it, writes F. E. Mills Young in “The Lamp.” The signs are unmistakable. You see it in many ways. For instance, among primitive peoples it was customary to paint or daub the face, to colour the nails; women today favour the custom. Primitive peoples inevitably accompanied all their doings with noise, the throb of the tom-tom, the beating of the drums, weird cries and the wailing of voices, so today noise is inseparable from every happening. The exercise of the dance has gone back centuries; it’s the same with music; all this jazz; it’s barbaric. Barbaric music expressed two emotions only, sex and war; these were the only emotions then understood. There is a development among nations of the irresponsible habit of making treaties and breaking these again as though honour and good faith were unknown virtues, and only craft and subtlety mattered. War has ceasecTto be an honourable struggle between nations and has degenerated into indiscriminate murder. Take- art, that’s reverting to the primitive school; there’s a lot of stuff put out, painting and sculpture, that might have been executed by bushmen centuries ago. Human beings are getting back to the primitive communistic habit of herding together and living like gipsies. Clothes too; everyone is shedding them so fast we’ll soon get back to unashamed savagery. Another great war would hasten the retrogression and put us back to the starting-point. It’s obvious in everything; music, literature, inventions. We don’t do much in the constructive line any more, it’s mostly destructive. Man has made his own advancement, and now he is for undoing it all, like a child who has built his structure oi‘ sand and levels it again with his spade.