The New York herald., 1921-02-20

presents as curious and puZzling a problem
the future development of the Mediter
ranean peoples presented at the time of
Tarquin.
The busy man in Wall Street. the ranch
owner in Texas, even the school teacher in
Cincinnati, have at the back of their brains
a sort of idea that, though about fifteen
hundred years ago the human race was
boiling like the surface of the mercural
globe itself some half a million years back
and no one knew with what mould the diff
ferent tribes of men would harden, the world
of men is now pretty well fixed and set
like the land and sea, the continents and
islands. the mountain ranges and the jutting
headands.
This Is an error, for though in this part
of the Old World we are all nominally Chris
tians whose wish it is to wear carefully
designed clothes and patent leather boots,
and to drink Haut Sauterne with oysters
and Chateau Latour with the entrees we
differ profoundly from the Americans mas
much as we are still stirred deep down in
souls by that vague migratory instinct
which produced the great Barbarian erup-
tons that accompanied the downfall of the
Roman Empire.
No one can foretell the final outcome of
the present welter. what new combinations
will be formed. what new permutations will
take place. In no place, not even in the
Pacific nor in the Mediterranean, is there
absolute permanence. but at three different
points in Europe everything is in the melt
ing pot and gigantic changes are taking
place before our eyes.
That vast stretch of terrestrial surface
which was once known as Russia is in
state of liquefaction, and the Muscovite race
is tossing to and fro from the White Sea to
the Black. from the Baltic to the Pacific
from the frozen tundras of the Arctic to the
scorching deserts of Persia; and no living
man can tell when these stupendous earth
shaking oscillations will cease and into what
forms this molten mass will temporarily
solidify-I say Temporarily" for nothing is
permanent
Asia leave out of account, though it's two
great agglomerations of humanity are also
in a state of disturbance Seething With un-
rest, India. with its enormous population
and its scores of different races is on the
eve of great changes and that prodigious
slice of the earth's surface which was once
known as the Celestial Empire is in a state
of full disintegration. with an armed and dis
cipined JaSan watching it codly, patiently,
not at all disinterestedly
In southeastern Europe the disappearance
of the great Ottoman Empire has created
in the Black Sea, the HIgean and the Le-
want a disturbance such as would be created
in the material world by the submersion of a
continent through volcanic agency. Who
can tell what will happen in Egypt in Syria,
in Anatolia in the Caucasus and through
out that vast Mohammedan world which has
gone to pieces before our eyes? Buddhism
and 1slam two of the greatest religious
systems in the world have gone under:
Christianity itself is questioned; a dozen
thrones have fallen i'm Europe, and the
Ancient order of Kings is in danger while
the whole parliamentary and capitalist sys-
TEN. which made possible the predominance
of the European races. is being seriously
attacked.