Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-05-21
Prophecies, Safe and Unsafe


~ HOSE oracular politicians and Other
wiseacres who are ever ready tc
mount the tripod and begin prophesy
ing with the assurance of a Pythian prizes
tess would do we'll to po1der tn passage
in Lord Bryc>'s recently published MODERN
II DEMOCRACY: '"To realize how vain con
\ lectures are, let us imagine ourselves to be
in the place of those who only three or four
generations ago failed to forecast what the
next following generation would see. Let us
suppose Burke, Johnson and Gib.on sitting
togethe" at a dinrer of the club in 1863
the year when Napoleon and wellington
were born, anC the talk falling on the poll
tics of the European continent. Did they have
any presage of the future? Men stood on tn
edge of stupendous changes and had not a
glimpse of even the outlines of those
changes
AS little did most of us suspect the on
coming of the catastrophe of 1914, although
as we now look back, it's genesis and rise
appear plain enough. Gwen the fool" said
| Homer, 'is wise after the event." Spying for
! big things, we ofttimes miss the inI.J ortant
ones because they are unpretentious. Had a
visitant from some superior planet dropped
down to the earth in the hey-day of her
monster reptiles and glimpsed here and yon-
der amidst t. cir unchallenged rule certain
scared little creatures which were the OBJ
scure forefathers of the mammals, he would
|
been spirit of widest prevision) that from
those humble, newly risen jewellers on the
bleak margin of life would come at length
the princes of creation. One murky Febru-
airy day of the year 1909, in Hardin county,
Kentucky, the crossroads store Ike per hail
ed the postAlan to ask what news was abroad.
''None with tellin," he ansW cred. "a F"bv
was born up to Tom Lincoln's this mornin
and they named him abe But that's all.
Nuthin' ever happens in Uilese parts" We
puzzle ,hopelessly over economic problems
which some unheralded scientist, working
quietly with test-tub- and alemhic is solv-
ing in a manner undreamed. We fume and
fuss over political ills, finding no "emedy IN
the grave statesmen Of the day, when forth
comes school master, gree1l in politics but
seasoned in knowledge Of justice, and swings
open a fresh era. We despair of Sc a wrongs
and follies, seeing no glimmer of ~'F'- cnt,
when all the while there are falling from
faithful, hidden lives, from teachers and
mothers and work-a-day seers, t CLEANS
that shall hearten, the leaven that shall lift
Maybe if our Burkes and Gibbons were TO
take the deep simplicities more largely into
acco" they could prophecy to better pur-
pose. The future indeed they could not fore
tell, except per- apps as the ever ingenious
oracle of Delphi foretold it for King Croesus,
when it answered that if he marched against
King Cyrus he would destroy a great en-
pire. Yet, while there is nothing so uncer-
tain as the .Jay of men Except the way of
women) we may be practically sur PRO
lessor Einstai Jtwithsta ding) that how
soever surpriseful those ways may prove
they will not disrupt the multiplication table
nor dispense utterly with Decalogue, nor
exhaust the possibilities of the Sermon on
the Mount. Landmarks like these are ever
visible, not only in the past but in the be-
wildering present well, and across the
furthest, dimmest ranges Of the future. If
America deal fairly and generously with the
world, if Georgia stand firmly for law and
Justice, disdaining to do wrong to the hum
blest of her people, if Atlanta make
abiding values her aim and think in terms of
quality and live in good neighborliness-
then in truth may it be prophecied that our
country always will be nobly great, our COM
monwealth always worth serving, our city
ALWAYS worth loving And this much as
sured what need of anxiety