Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-09-28
Warnings from Cool Heads

T is not only he who comes like prophet
crying in the wilderness that warns the
world today of impending danger, but
also the cool-pulsed, level-looking, fact
seeking scientist. Whose sees and thinks
can but suspect that critical hour of hui
man history is at hand, turnlng-tlme that
may lead either to great good or to great
i'll; and the clearer the thinking, the keener
the impression.
Consider these quietly uttered but ire
mendousy significant lines from Mr.. H. j.
E. Peake's presidential address before the
anthropology section of the British Associa-
ton for the Advancement of Science: st is
needless for me to remind you that the world
is in state of very unstable equilibrium
that the crust is, so to speak, cracked in
many places, that the assures are becoming
wider and deeper, and that fresh assures are
constantly appearing, not only in distant
lands, but nearer home" Continuing his
geological metaphor and coming to more def
mite terms, he says: This crust is strait
fled, and there are horizontal as we'll as YER
tical cleavages, which are daily becoming
more marked. 1t is to the interest of human
ity that these breaches should be healed and
the cracks stopped, or We may find the civili-
cation of the world, which has grown up
through long millennia at the cost OF enor-
nous struggles, breaking up into thousand
fragments" The moralistic lecturer, from
time out Of mind, has wearied with COM
parsons Of modern wrong and anciente
Rome. But hear this unsentimental, thor
oughgoing anthropologist: "Such a break
in the culture of the European region fol-
lowed the dissolution of the Roman En-
pire, and more than a thousand years were
needed to heal it; nay, some Of the cracks
then made have never yet been closed
Anything that may help to avert such a
disaster is important to the human race"
1t was only the other day that the emf
nent Italian Observation-Disclosures Ferrero,
was speaking to this same purport, point
ing out the perilous possibilities in the
drift and temper of the times. Ferrero's
concern was with political and social phe-
nomena, with the instability of interna-
tional affairs and the giddy reactions from
the war. He did not say, but he might
! truly have said, that responsibility for
that unstable condition lay partly in Amer
1ca's failure to support the idea of a
world league for peace and justice. From
a different point of view, but to virtually
the same conclusion as these great observ-
ers, speaks DR.. Edwin E. Slosson, editor
of Science Service, whose intellectual keen
ness is tempered by unfailing humor. Not
as grim-visaged reformer, but as a
poised watcher of things, he asks, apropos
OF the destructive powers now at the ma
lions command: "Can we say that man
has reached a mental and moral maturity
wherein he can safely be entrusted with
such weapons? 1t is clear that unless man
learns to make proper use of his new
found knowledge he is likely to destroy
himself"
This is no more inconce1vable than that
centuries Of past civilization, far more bril-
liant in some respects than our own, sank
at length into centuries Of darkness. How
Wondrous soever be the gains in material
power, the loss of the human soul means
the loss of humanity. Man may we'll perish
tro minis little earth, as other species have
perlshed before him, if he serve no fairer
purpose than that of the beasts about him,