THE CIVILISATION OF TO-DAY

New Zealand Tablet, 1 June 1911, Page 1000

THE CIVILISATION OF TO-DAY

THE BROTHERHOOD OF MEN Preaching recently in St. Francis Xavier’s Church, Dublin, the Rev. Robert Kane, S.J., dealing with the present condition of Europe, said: . What a sorry figure will not our twentieth century appear when, in a century yet to come, historians will look back and try to judge the worth of the civilisation of to-day. It will be a very difficult task. Our age is very boastful about itself, but a future age may judge our age according to a stern impartial standard. Yet there is much to say on one side and on the other. We are highly civilised in our science and in its application, in our railways, motor cars, telephones, in our machines and in our manufactures, in the costumes of our suffragettes and in the nakedness of our ballets; in the exquisite refinement of our cooking and in the loathsome horror of our slums. We are also highly civilised in the art of lying diplomacy and in the science of murderous war. Alas, alas! what has our modern world made of the brotherhood of men. I dare not sicken you with the recital of the battle scenes where France and Germany, Russia and Japan, played their historic parts. That was only play. The Real Havoc will Begin when, in the new war, the demons of our civilised century will be let loose. It costs Germany 60 millions a year for her proud boast of being the first Empire in Europe. Her uniforms and fighting gear of machines and men cost France 47 millions annually. Russia has to pay 621 millions. England has to pay 62-J- millions a year. All this display, all this readiness, all this glorious pageantry of readiness to make the world’s women weep with tears and to make the world’s men weep with blood has its sad shadow in a hard, practical sense. The loss each year in money which might be spent in useful work, and which is extorted from hungry homes, is in Germany and France 34 millions, in Russia 93 millions, and in Great Britain 37 millions. Mark that this peace of Europe is not a peace of contentment. Russia is only waiting for the moment when England is in difficulties to invade India. England herseli has some other spots to annex in order, to secure her scientific frontier. France is burning with fierce eagerness to reconquer Alsace-Lorraine and, if possible, to - obliterate Prussia. If Germany were only sure that the other Powers would stand aloof, she would at once wring many more milliards from France, seize the province of Champagne, and probably bring Belgium and the Netherlands, with their coveted seaboard, under the paternal rule of • the Kaiser. Germany has also another plan; it is no mere dream, but a plan prepared in every practical detail: Her plan is to make a dash for London, paralyse England, annex some of her colonies, and take over "an enormous share of her gold. The United States are building a great navy; not for defenceit is no one’s interest to invade the States —but for attack. It is not friendship but fear that holds in leash the dogs of war. What will the-calm historian write a century hence in his quiet study, as he is reading the records of the civilisation of to-day? Turn oyer another page. The heading of The Page of Peace. It is the story of our industry, the record of our labors in lonely homes or teeming factories. But that record to be true must reach very far and very deep in order to grasp the final threads of our modern finance. Our civilisation is so skilfully elaborating the methods of business as to approach more and more to the finest means of counterfeit, adulteration, fraud, unmitigated, unabashed; wholesale robbery. With all this, there is also that other war of always interrupted feud and often furious battle, the war between capital and labor, the war between the masters and the men. It is a war which, in the words of Pope Leo XIII., ‘ results in the paralysis of business, and not only injures the men themselves and their masters, but also grievously affects the trade and even unnerves the vital interests" of the common weal. Moreover,’ the great Pape adds, ‘ when strikes occur, violence and disorder are close at hand, and the public peace is broken by savage riot, almost by civil war.’ Our civilisation in its commercial aspect bears little likeness to a brotherhood of men. There is a blacker shadow still that falls across the near path of the future. Listen to Pope Leo XIII. : ‘ The effect of civil change and revolution has been to divide society into two extreme and opposite castes. On the one side there is the party that holds the power because it holds the wealth, which has in its grasp all labor and all trade, which manipulates for its own benefit and for its own purposes all sources of supply, and which is powerfully represented in the councils of the State itself. On the other hand, there is the needy and powerless multitude, sore and suffering, and always" ready for disturbance.’ Thus within every nation there are two hostile camps that wage their war of gold while waiting to wage their war of steel, that clash in fierce conflict of intrigue and of finance while waiting to meet where the bomb bursts > and where the city burns. Nor does the existence of a middle class at all bridge over ibis sharp and extreme separation between the opposing

armies. You will remember what Ferrer said at Barcelona—' Blot out from life those infamous ,middle classes.' The outlook in Europe;, is dark indeed. .'Our civilisation is in turmoil. The modern brain is feverish. Our worldly world has failed.