DESCENT OF MAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 October 1941, Page 7

DESCENT OF MAN

4 ' WHAT OF THE FUTURE? 4 “We are in the midst of days throbbing with the anguish of a tortured world,” said Professor W. Mac Neile Lfecon, in' opening the Ker Memorial Lecture at Glasgow University. After a comprehensive survey of the issues at stake, the ■ lecturer continued: — “If civilisation cannot or will not provide for its own preservation, if vast barbarian hordes can be harnessed to scientific machinery and hurled upon unoffending peoples, we are led to exceedingly sombre reflections upon the future of the race. We have to face the prospect of an era in which whole nations may become the willing or helpless instruments of some half-do-zen ruffians, employed by them as mere slaves in designs far removed from their own personal interests, under the command of taskmasters as careless of their lives and indifferent to their welfare as were the Egyptian Pharaohs of the serfs who built the Pyramids. A fine tale, truly, to tell of modern man, the proud heir of all the ages, that his use and end and destiny is to be .harnessed to the chariot of some mad dictator, or to become the miserable dupe of unscrupulous adventurers, to be exploited, plundered, stampeded. A fine tale to tell of mod- " ern man, a brilliant conclusion to our Christian civilisation. When the peoples no longer control their governments, but their governments exploit their peoples, we must cease to talk of the rights of man, that fantastic dream,”