The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1939-08-17

Ill
II MONOTONOUS
II . SAME THING YEAR AFTER
II YEAR
History is great stuff, interesting
but monotonous.
Mankind has history because some
people got hungry and desperate
while other people were fat and Sc
cure.
Clumps Of people, families, tribes,
nations, wandered searching for food
until they found, in some sheltered
valley or lush plain, assurance against
famine and drought. They settled
down, learned to plant grain and to
store it against the winter and the
dearths, replaced mobile tents and
temporary huts with permanent dwell
ings, turned their thoughts of social
organization from organization for
migration and war to sedentary cities,
constantly growing bigger, and peace
to assure security of their blessings.
Out on the arid plains and up in the
mountains were other folks. Nomads,
following the seasons in search of
pasture. Lean from headlong marches
and scanty food. Fierce because their
! lives were battles, for waterholes, for
grass, for game, against other nomads
crowding in from even less fertile
regions.
Sometimes, when droughts on the
steppes came with burgeoning harvest
in the valleys, the nomads gathered
together, mounted their horses, lean
and tireless as themselves, pouring
down, ruthless and desperate, on the
soft and peaceful settled people. Con-
quered them, became their autocratic
rulers, became soft and complacent
and peaceful in their turn.
Another drought over wide areas,
another lush harvest and they in turn
went down under a wave of nomads,
driven by the hunger behind, lured
by the abundance ahead.
| x x 4
Manchus in China, Saxons in Eng
land, Franks in Gaul, Barbarians of
many kinds in Rome. And away back,
Assyrians and Akkadians and what
not in long succession in Mespotamia.
Israelites in Canaan.
And behind them, the Huns and
Mongols tribes, driven from the
steppes of central Asia.
Pressing on the heels of the Nordice
and Latins and Slavs who had made
the same great trek before them.
Forcing them westward into England
and Ireland and Scotland and Scan
dinavia and Spain and even acrosge the
Mediterranean into North Africa.
Mingling their blood, conquered and
conquering, repulsed in one generation
to return in the next or when the
droughts came down again upon what
ever region in which they may have
halted their age-long drift before
creeping hunger toward food and COM
fort and rest ahead.
Across the Atlantic, fleeing from
the man-made droughts of repressive
social conditions, searching for free
lands, for Ell Doradoes, for domains
where they could be free themselves
and, true to their racial habit, at the
same time rule others.
AS their ancestors did, ages ago,
from the time they first stirred out
of that equally forgotten place, some
where deep in the steepes of Asia.
History is repetition. The droughts
came down on the rich plains of the
Central West to which these children
of the nomads had come, following
their racial instinct. So they started
to drift away from the burnt steppes
of this land toward the deep rich soils
and the abundant waters of the ir-
rigated country still farther west,
driven by hunger behind and lured
by abundance ahead.
Not in creaking, clumsy ox-wains in
equally creaking flivvers. Not armed
to the teeth, not organized, with lead
ers like Hengist and Horsa, Brennus
or Attila, but under the same urge.
Close to the soil, they obeyed the
urge to seek better soil to replace
that which had betrayed them. Millions
of them.
X X X
But, behind them are other millions.
Eight, ten, twelve millions of nomads.
Equally hungry but disrooted from the
soil. With no Mesopotamia or Canaan
or California as an outlet to their ra-
cial restlessness. What are they GO
ing to do? What kind of a nomad
foray will they undertake?
The reason history is montonous is
that human nature was brewed ages
ago. A nomad in fiivver is the son
of countless generations of nomads
just the same. A nomad before a fac
tory gate is just as much a nomad.
Something to think about?
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