New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-08-20
Castaways, Real and Pretended

Every parent who has been condemned by
his offspring to read out long disquisitions
from "The Swiss Family Robinson" on the
simple and satisfactory pastime of being
cast away is entitled to grim apprecia-
ton of the tale of the lost souls of Clip
perton Island. These poor Mexicans did
not find life on lonely strand as gay and
comfortable as did those marvellous Swiss.
Set face to face with nature, unassisted by
any tools of civilization, they failed to
make living, quite as you and l would
probably fail. Most of them died of
scurvy or starvation. The eleven sur
vivors. taken off by a United States war
ship, were all women and children. The
last men persisted in desperate attempt
to sail the one thousand miles to the main
land in an open rowboat. Not even the
mutiny of the Bounty, that most celebrated
Narrowing of the amiable but lonely Pa
cific, had so terrible an ending.
How different was the fate of those ex-
traordinary shipwrecked Swiss! No ami
nal could drop in that did not contribute
page of learning to their annals, spouted
ty their learned father, and, more impor-
tant, some essential little knicknack for
their home. A plain, everyday fiamingo
was either converted into docile pony for
Ernest or carved up into warm coat and
r,uttees for Fritz-while father lectured
On its habits and disposition with pious
footnote of obligation to the Almighty
There is one thing to be said on the side
of Johann Rudolf Wyss, professor of phi
losophy and chief librarian of Berne. The
spot upon which he picked to cast away
his remarkable family was fertile and
variegated coast, as rich in fora and
fauna as any herbarium and zoo. So,
granting the encyclopedia knowledge in
which that marvellous pattern of pdter
familias rejoiced, there was no reason
why his flock should not have fourished
upon the fat of the land. The material
was there, granted the brains to cope with
it, Clipperton Island is very different
spot. 1t is tiny coral island in the Pa
cific Ocean, an atoll, affording an excel
lent circular harbor and abundant fish,
But cocoanuts and pigs seem to have been
the only life on dry land. Moreover, it is
a thousand miles from anywhere, roughly
to the southwest of Mexico, and far out Of
the track of ships a-sail or a-steam. A less
habitable and more forsaken spot it would
he hard to select.
But given Paradise, precious few mod
ems could do more than skimp along. We
are highly educated by comparison with
less learned centuries, but not educated at
all in the raw business of squeezing life
out Of a reluctant Mother Nature. We
don't have to be. We ring bell or tele-
phone an order, and our Aladdin civiliza-
ton does the rest. The farmers boy would
60 better than some on desert island. The
plainsman would do best of all. Most Of
US would die of starvation before we could
remember how to make fire with sticks
or invent fishline or plant a last peck
Of potatoes so they would grow. We have
even seen picknickers who preferred
canned alcohol TO wood fire, for the sim
pie reason that they could not learn how
TO build fire that would cook.
The Boy Scouts are putting some rudi-
mentary sense back into coming genera
tons. Perhaps, also, universal military
training may help. All modern education
ie based on the notion that actual contact
with the hard facts of life has been neg