Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1915-01-20

It was going on for thousands Of years
more. 1t was inevitable urtil 1t was
impossible. Any one who had denied
the inevitability publicly would have
been counted-oh. a silly fellow! Old
Bismarck was only just little forcible
on the lines Of the accepted ideas. That
Is all. He thought that since there had
to be national governments he would
make one that was strong at home and
invincible abroad. Because he had fed
with a kind IT rough appetite upon
what we can see now were very stupid
ideas, that does not make him stupid
man. We've had advantages; we've
had unity and collectivism blasted into
our brains. Where should we be now
but for the grace of science? l should
have been an embttered, spiteful,
doWntrodden member of the Russian
Intelligence. conspirator, a prisoner
or an assassin. You. my dear. would
have been breaking dingy windows as
a suffragette.'
"Never!' said Edith stoutly.
For time the talk broke into hu-
morous personalities, and the young
people gibed at each other across the
smiling old administrator. and then
presently one Of the young scientific
men gave things a new turn. He
spoke like one who was full to the
brim.
You know, sir, I've fancy-it is
hard to prove such things-that CIV
ilization was very near disaster when
the atomic bombs came banging into
it; that If there had been no Holster
and no induced radio activity the
world would have-smashed-mu as
it did. Only instead of its being a
smash that opened a way to better
things it might have been a smash
without recovery. 1t is part Of my
business to understand economics, and
from that point of view the century
years crescendo of waste. Only the
extreme individualism Of that period,
only its utter want Of any collective
understanding or purpose, can explain
that waste. Mankind used up mate
rial-insanely. They had got through
three-quarters of all the coal in the
planet; they had used up most Of the
oil; they had swept away their forests.
! and they were running short Of tin and
copper. Their wheat areas were get
ting weary and populous, and many
Of the big towns had so lowered the
wa tor lovol of <ho;r va hlo hills that
| they suffered drought every summer.
The whole system was rushing toward
bankruptcy. And they were spending
| every year vaster and vaster amounts
| Of power and energy upon military
| preparations and continually expand
| ing the debt of industry to capital.
| The system was already staggering
when Holster began his researches.
So far as the world in general went,
there was no sense Of danger and no
desire for inquiry. They had no be-
lief that science could save them nor
any idea that there was need to be
saved. They could not, they would
not, see the gulf beneath their feet. 1t
was pure good luck for mankind at
large that any research at all was in
progress. And as l say. sir. If that
line Of escape hadn't opened, before
now there might have been crash.
revolution, panic, social disintegration,
famine, and-it is contradictions
plete disorder. The rails might have
rusted on the disused railways by now.
the telephone poles have rotted and
fallen. the big liners dropped into
sheet iron in the ports; the burnt, de-
serted cities become the ruinous hid
ing places Of gangs of robbers. We
might have been brigands in a shat
tered and attenuated world All, you
may smile, but that had happened be-
fore in human history. The world is
still studded with the ruins of broken
down civilizations. Barbaric bands
made their fastness upon the Acropolis.
and the tomb of Hadrian became a
fortress that warred across the ruins
of Rome against the Colosseum. Had
all that possibility of reaction ended SO
certainly in 1910? Is it all 50 very far
away even now?"
1T seems far enough away now."
said Edith Hayden.
But forty years ago."
NO." said Karenin, with his eyes
upon the mountains. Il think you un-
derrate the available intelligence in
those early decades of the twentieth
century. Officially. know. politically
that intelligence didn't tell, but it was
there. And question your hypothesis.
doubt if that discovery could have
been delayed. There is kind Of in
evitable logic now in the progress of
research. For hundred years and
more thought and science have been
going their own way regardless of the
common events of life. You see-they
have got loose. If there had been no
Holster there would have been some
similar man. If atomic energy had not
come in one year it would have come
in another. In decadent Rome the
march of science had scarcely begun.
Nineveh. Babylon, Athens. Syracuse,
Alexandria. these were the first rough
experiments in association that made
security, breathing space in which
inquiry was born. Man had to expert.
ment before he found out the way to
begin. But already 200 years ago he
had fairly begun. The politics and
dignities and wars Of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries were only the
last phoenix blaze of the former civil.
cation 6aring up about the beginnings
of the new. which we serve