Evening star., 1936-05-10

SSTROM the earliest days of
- civilization mankind's story
had been woven in a pat
tern of gold and scarlet
the gold of trade and the scarlet of
imperialism. The coming of the mar
velous civilization of the machine had
not altered that pattern. 1t had pro-
duced an age of economic empires
which differed from the age of the
military empires only in being more
dangerous; for, having stimulated an
enormous increase in the world S
population, it threatened a correspond
ingly immense disaster if the intricate
mechanism sustaining two thousand
million people were destroyed.
AT this time it seemed that the
clash of the empires, which had ex-
ploded once already, 20 years earlier,
in a gigantic world war, in which
100000 had been killed on battle
fields during four years, must in
evitably continue and intensity, crisis
succeeding crisis and war following
war. until the civilization which had
spawned these huge and powerful en-
pires disintegrated like the earlier
civilizations upon whose ruins, strata
upon strata, it had through the CEN
turies slowly and painfully arisen.
But at this phase of greatest strain,
when all the states were rapidly arm
ing, the haves to hold and the have
nots to seize, the key was found to the
door through which mankind was to
step out of that ancient pattern of
blood and gold into the new pattern
whose design had already been blue
printed by scientists and engineers
and a few world-ranging thinkers.
The second punic war of that age
was averted and the great peace began.
Conference Miracle.
"It can be dated from the World
Migration and Raw Materials Confer
ence which followed the replacement
of the Versailles treaty by a new
European settlement, freely negotiated
between sovereign states. Although
masked, the parley was in fact held
to resolve the issue as to whether a
more equitable distribution of the
worlds land and mineral wealth should
be achieved by peaceful cooperation
or through fierce and protracted wars
which would inevitably spread, stage
by stage, over the whole planet. In
view of the difficulties and the pas
sions which surrounded the funda-
mental issues, the success which at
tended the conference must be ac-
counted miracle no less startling
than the original miracle of mans
rise. despite everything and against all
probability, from the cave and the
tree to the near-mastery of the planet
on which he lives.
When the leaders of the nations
solved the central linked problems of
raw material supply and migration,
they automatically brought to an end,
In spirit of peaceful cooperation,
the dangerous reign of the economic
empire, legacy Of the military empires
Of Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne,
Genghis Khan and Napoleon. From
this point world civilization began"
Thus the historian of the future
perhaps! On the portents, as they
appear in the Spring of 1895, the
chances of our historian being able
to write that passage look slight.
something is shaping as
minds are forcibly brought square on
to the fact that the greatest force
making for grand-scale war Is hunger |
for raw materials and land. This !
hunger in turn can be reduced to the
lust to survive In an age when mate |
rials and markets are the source Of a |
great nations life. How that hunger |
can be assuaged without resort to war
looms now as the major problem con- |
fronting the contemporary world.
1t Is granite. But John Bull has !