Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1914-12-30
BY n. G. WELLS

que 10 the lOrSet1ulneSS. lrrltaDllty or
fatigue Of its members. 1t expert
mented considerably and Numbered
often. Excepting Holster. whose gift
was highly specialized. it is question
able whether there was a single man
of the first order Of human quality in
the gathering. But it had a modest
fear Of itself and Il consequent direct
ness that gave it general distinction
There was, Of course. noble SIM
plicity about Leblanc, but even of him
it may be asked whether he vas not
rather good and honest minded than
in the fuller sense great.
The ex-king had wisdom and a GER
tain romantic dash, he was man
among thousands, even if he was not
a man among millions, but his memoirs
and, indeed, his decision to write
memoirs, give the quality Of himself
and his associates. The book makes
admirable but astonishing reading
Therein he takes the great work the
council was doing for granted. as a
little child takes God. 1t is as if he
had no sense of it at all. He tells
amusing trivialties about his cousin
Wilhelm and his secretary, Firmin, he
pokes fun at the American president,
who was indeed rather little accident
of the political machine than repre-.
sentative American, and he gives a
long description Of how he was lost for
three days in the mountains in the CON-
pany Of the only Japanese member, a
loss that seems to have caused no
serious interruption of the work of the
council.
The Brissago conference has been
written about time after time as
though it were gathering Of the very
flower of humanity. Perched up there
by the freak or wisdom of Leblanc, it
had certain Olympian quality, and
the natural tendency of the human
mind to elaborate such a resemblance
would have us give it's members the
likenesses of gods. 1t would be equally
reasonable to compare it to one of
those enforced meetings upon the
mountain tops that must have occurred
in the opening phases of the deluge.
The strength of the council lay not in
itself but in the circumstances that
had Quickened It's intelligence, dispelled
its vanities and emancipated it from
traditional ambitions and antagonisms.
1t was stripped of the accumulations
of centuries. naked government with
fp0n6np, Of hot
ness affords. And it's problems were
set before it with plainness that was
out of all comparison with the compli-
Gated and perplexing intimations of the
former time
The world on which the council look
ed did indeed present a task quite suf-
ficiently immense and altogether too
urgent for any wanton indulgence in
internal dissension. 1t may be inter-
esting to sketch in a few phrases the
condition of mankind at the close of
the period of warning states. in the
year of crisis that followed the release
OF atomic power 1t was world ex
traordinarily limited when one meas
ures 1t by later standards, and it was
now in state Of the direst confusion
and distress.
1t must be remembered that 1T this
time men had still to spread into enor-
nous areas Of the land surface Of the
globe. There were vast mountain will
dernesses, sandy deserts and frozen
lands. Men still chung closely to wa
ter and arabic soil in temperate or sub
tropical climates, they lived abundant
~ only In river valleys, and al! their
great cities had grown upon large nav
igable rivers or close to ports upon the
sea. Over great areas even of this suit
able land flies and mosquitoes armed
with infection had so far defeated hui
man invasion, and under their protec-
ton the virgin forests remained un-
touched. Indeed, the whole world,
even in it's most crowded districts, was
filthy with flies and swarming with
needless insect life to an extent which
is now almost incredible. A population
map of the world in 1850 would have
followed seashore and river course so
closely In it's darker shading as to give
an impression that homo sapiens was
an amphibious animal. His roads and
railways lay also along the lower con-
tours, only here and there to pierce
some mountain barrier or reach some
holiday resort did they Chamber above
5000 feet. And across the ocean his
traffic passed in definite lines. There
were hundreds Of thousands of square
miles Of ocean no ship ever traversed
except by mischance.
Into the mysteries of the solid globe
under his feet he had not yet pierced
for five miles, and it was still not forty
years since, with tragic pertinacity,
he had clambered to the poles of the
earth. The limitless mineral wealth of
the arctic and antarctic circles was
still buried beneath vast accumula-
lions of immemorial ice, and the secret
riches of the inner zones of the crust
were untapped and indeed unsuspect-
ed. The higher mountain regions were
known only to sprinkling of guide
led climbers and the frequenters of a
few gaunt hotels, and the vast rainless
belts of land that lay across the CONT
mental masses, from Cobb to Sahara
and along the backbone of America,
with their perfect air, their daily baths
OF blazing sunshine, their nights of
cool serenity and glowing stars and
their reservoirs of deep lying water,
were as yet only desolations of fear
and death to the common Imagination.
And now, under the shock Of the
atomic bombs, the great masses of
population which had gathered into