Evening star., 1932-08-07

an alien sun warm MS SQudrlSn NOIulC
face. Then he was off again: man of
energy who must always be purpoSeful
in action, who can never rest long. AS
I watched his surging progress through
the water from where I lounged in
boat under the Genevan sky, he looked
to me portent but was he
portent of doom, or of new age?
Civilization seemed to be cracking
Men did not believe that it could fail;
but in this very lake had bathed admin
istrators of Roman civilization which
had thought itself eternal, but which,
after all, had vanished like a dream.
Those Roman civil servants doubtless
saw the dangers which beset their civ
nization as clearly as this little swim
ming man diScerned those which beSet
his: the debts of all social classes hol-
lowing out the state, the inability to
solve the monetary problem, the grow
ing chaos in the financial system. They
may have urged action; but the sources
of power lay in other hands.
For years this man had been urging
action. The machine, science and in
vention, he had asserted, have created
q
are due to unwillingneSS to recognize
this fundamental fact. He had called
for concerted action by the leading ma
tionS, but so far the latter had moved
with a massive resolution steadily far
ther from cooperation and closer to
nationalistic isolation.
Now one could not say whether he had
been born too early or too late. I re-
flected: He has great qualities, immense
capacity. But so had the Roman ad-
ministrator The latter did not fail. 1t
was the system which let him down. He
fell into nothingress as the world he
knew opened under his feet
HON the other hand" ran my thought,
"conceivably our machine civili-
zation loaded though it is beyond the
danger mark with debts, will be saIvaged
by the cooperative action of the lead
ers of Western mankind. The ideas of
this little swimming man will conquer.
His plans will be accepted. And then
this man, with his tireless activity, his
formidable powers of work, his ant-like
industry, his world-ranging mind, his
capacity for controlling experts and spe-
cialiStS and co-ordinating their work
into an ordered, practical plan, his flair
for dealing with international commit
tees and with politicians, his austere
habit of life, his enormous concentration
upon and absorption in his job-then
this man, efficient calm, incorruptible,
Spartan, of limited ambition, will be the
archtype of the men we shall want in
creasingly to take hold of things for us
in new, reorganized and Saner world"
Meantime, Sir Arthur Salter of oxford,
London and Geneva swan on. He had
been in some time already, but he per-
mitS himself no other exercise; and any
way, perhaps he was having an extra
long swim because after a decade at
Geneva as director of the financial, eco
nomic and transit sections of the League,
he had decided to close this chapter of
his incredibly active life and seek new
work and adventures in London.
At so he has already done the work OF
10 men: put over the first national in
surance scheme in England, controlled
the whole of the merchant shipping of
Britain and the nations allied to her
during the war, dominated the Repara-
tionS Commission, given the Dawes Com
mittee its basic ideas reconstructed half
a dozen War-broken states, organized the
first world economic conference, pro-
vided China and India with complete
schemes of economic reorganization,
written book on world recovery which
has been translated into almost every
language and is one of the worlds best
sellers, and started in to straighten out