Ladysmith news-budget. [volume] (Ladysmith, Rusk County, Wis.) 1907-1927, 1910-05-20
MODERN CIVILIZATION
is ROOSEVELT.S TOPIC
Interesting Lecture on "7he World
Mouen1ent" Delivered at the Uni
Uersity of Berlin by the Ex-Presi-
dent of the United States

So much for the geographical side Of
| the expansion of modern civilization. But
| only few of the many and intense ac-
| tivities of modern civilization have found
their expression this side. The move
ment has been just as striking in It's con-
| quest over natural forces, in its searching
| inquiry into and about the soul of things.
Conquest Over Nature.
The conquest over nature has included
| an extraordinary increase in every form
| of knowledge of the world we live in, and
| also an extraordinary increase in the pow
| er of utilizing forces of nature. In both
| directions the advance has been very
| great during the past four or five CEN
| turtles, and in both directions it has gone
| on with ever increasing rapidity during
| the last century. After the great age of
| Rome had passed, the boundaries of
| knowledge shrank, and in many cases it
was not until well-nigh our own times
| that her domain was once again pushed
| beyond the ancient landmarks. About the
| year $50 A. D. Ptolemy, the geographer,
| published his map of central Africa and
| the sources of the Nile, and this map was
more accurate than any which we had as
| late as 1850 A. D. More was known of
| physical science, and more of the truth
about the physical world was guessed at,
in the days of Pliny, than was known or
| guessed until the modern movement be-
| gan. The case was the same as regards
| military science. At the close of the Mid
die Ages the weapons were what they
had always been-sword, shield, bow,
| spear; and any Improvement in them was
more than offset by the loss in knowledge
of military organization, in the science of
war; and in military leadership since the
days of Hannibal and Caesar.
A hundred years ago, when this uni
versity was founded, the methods of
transportation did not differ in the .es-
sentials from what they had been among
the highly civilized nations of antiquity.
Travellers and merchandise went by land
in wheeled vehicles or on beasts Of bur-
den, and by sea in boats propelled by
sails or by oars; and news was conveyed
as it always had been conveyed A grad
uate of your university today can go to
mid-Asia or mid-Africa with far less con-
seriousness of performing a feat of note
than would have been the case a hundred
years ago with a student who visited
Sicily and Andalusia.
Moreover, the invention and use Of ma
chinery run by steam or electricity have
worked a revolution in industry as great
as the revolution in transportation; so
that here again the difference between
ancient and modern civilization is one not
merely of degree but of kind. In many
vital respects the huge modern city differs
more from all preceding cities than any
the giant factory town is OF and by itself
one of the most formidable problems of
modern life.
Steam and electricity have given the
race dominion over land and water such
it never had before: and now the con-
quest of the air is directly impending. AS
books preserve thought through time, so
the telegraph and the telephone transmit
it through the space they annihilate, and
therefore minds are sWayed one by an
other without regard to the limitations of
space and time which formerly forced
each community to work in comparative
isolation. It is the same with the body as
with the brain. The machinery of the fac
tory and the farm enormously multiplies
bodily skill and vigor. Countless trained
intelligences are at work to teach US how
to avoid or counterfeit the effects of
waste.
The advances in the realm of pure intel
lect have been of equal note, and they
have been both intensive and extensive.
Great virgin fields of learning and wis
dom have been discovered by the few,
and at the same time knowledge has
spread among the many to a degree never
dreamed of before. Old men among us
have seen in their own generation the
rise of the first rational science of the
evolution of life. The astronomer and the
chemist, the psychologist and the his
torian, and all their brethren in many diff
ferent fields of wide endeavor, work with
a training and knowledge and method
which are in effect instruments of pre-
cision differentating their labors from
the labors of their predecessors as the
rife is differentiated from the bow.
The play of new forces is evident in
the moral and spiritual world as in the
world of the mind and the body.
One Danger of Civilization.
One of the prime dangers of civilization
has always been it's tendency to cause
the loss Of the virile fighting virtues, of
the fighting edge. When men get too COM
Portable and lead too luxurious lives there
is always danger lest the softness eat like
an acid into their manliness of fiber The
barbarian, because of the very conditions
of his life, is forced to keep and develop
certain hardy qualities which the man of
civilization tends to lose, whether he be
clerk, factory hand, merchant, or even a
certain type of farmer. Now 1 will not
assert that in modern civilized society
| these tendencies have been wholly over
come; but there has been much more
successful effort to overcome them than
| was the case in the early civilizations
| This Is curiously shown by the military
| history of the Graeco- Roman period as
| compared with the history of the last four
| or five centuries here in Europe and
| among nations Of European descent. In
| the Grecian and Roman military history
| the change was steadily from a citizen
| army to an army of mercenaries. In the
| days of the early greatness of Athens,
| Thebes, and Sparta, in the days when the
| Roman republic conquered what world it
| knew, the armies were filled with citizen
| soldiers. But gradually the citizens re-
| fused to serve in the armies, or became
| unable to render good service. The Greek
| states described by Polybius, with but few
| exceptions, hired others to do their fight
| ing for them. The Romans of the days of
| Augustus had utterly ceased to furnish
| any cavalry, and were rapidly ceasing to
| furnish any infantry, to the legions and
| cohorts. When the civilization came to
| an end, there were no longer citizens in
| the ranks of the soldiers. The change
| from the citizen army to the army of
| mercenaries had been completed.
Modern Citizens Armies.
| Now, the exact reverse has been the
| case with us in modern times. A few
| centuries ago the mercenary soldier was
| the principal figure in most armies, and in
| great numbers of cases the mercenary
soldier was an alien. In the wars of re-
| lgion in France in the Thirty Years
| war in Germany, in the wars that imme-
| diately marked the beginning of the
| breakup of the great Polish kingdom, the
regiments and brigades of foreign SOL