Evening star., 1950-01-01
Terrible and Wonderful


today cannot be summed up and defined
adequately in few paragraphs or even
in few books. So much has happened in
and to our Nation and the world since
January /, 1900, so many tremendous
things-such change, such revolution, such
deep and far-reaching eruptions in man
kinds thinking and environment-that THE
mind, looking backward and striving to
gather the whole of 1t in single picture,
can at best see only myriad bits and pieces
dizzily whirling about. There is no ordered
pattern here. What we have, instead is
gigantic kaleidoscope of the truly terrible
and the truly wonderful INTERVENING in a
way that somehow chills the spine and
exalts the spirit at one and the same time.
When the century opened, in the soft
and tranquil afterlight of the Victorian
Era, the world was relatively at peace,
life was Slow-paced, and men-with their
horses and carriages, with their hopes,
with their dreams, with their fresh
resolves, with their sentimental toasts
at midnight-looked forward to future
of quiet progress. They sensed that they
were on the threshold of something very
big, something very new, but they did
not suspect that either the bigness or
newness would be nearly so spectacular and
phenomenal as the passage of time has
since demonstrated. Telephones, auto
mobiles, the radio, aviation, television,
steady chronological advances, the con-
stant increase in labors productivity, the
immense growth in population, the devel
opment of near miraculous drugs, the
amazing gain in the average human beings
life expectancy-these things and their
kind were not foreseen in quite the way
that they have come about
Nor did men in 1900 foresee the First
World War or the Second World War.
Kaiser Wilhelm, Lloyd George, Clemenceau,
and Franklin Roosevelt were all either
virtually unknown or little more than mere
boys. Events and personalities had not
yet interacted on each other, and on the
great bulk of humanity, to sfatter forever,
irreparably, the past social, political,
economic and military patterns of national
and international life. Out of the agonies
and upheavals of the new times, bring
ing on the dissolution of colonialism and
the twilight of such things as laissez-
faire enterprise, there now came the mod
ern version of totalitarianism, more COM
plete and appalling than any of its prede-
cessors. There came, too, the day-which
is still here-when democracy, half un-
believingly, found itself fighting for sur
vival in problem ridden age poisoned
by the mutual fear and suspicion of a fate
full power contest revolving around the
Russian and American giants To cap
everything, with sudden binding flash,
the atom blew up in mankind's face-one
OF history's most portentous developments,
full Of the promise of enormous good, but
also force of unparalleled potential evil.
All this constitutes merely the outline
of an outline of an outline of what has
happened in the past so years. What
must always elude u.s. of course, what we
cannot measure, what we cannot capture
and imprison In thousand paragraphs
or thousand books, is what humanity
itself, ruler and ruled, has felt during that
time. Loneliness of spirit-the Ice that
f1ecks mans soul when he thinks of
himself as tiny accident without mean
ing in universe that has no God-has
been widespread in an epoch of growing
materialism and declining religious faith.
There has been much weeping. There has
been much suffering, much fear, much
heartache, but laughter and happiness
have been present, too, in portions probably
as great as that enjoyed by many a gene
ration in other centuries. Despite the
Cassandras and the Jeremiahs, despite
the terrors that have been visited upon
the world since 1900, our race, in these
last five decades, has wrought so many
wonders that 1t has ample reason now
to face the next five with confidence in its
ability not merely to survive but to improve
upon itself as WELL
The world is not the same as it was
so years ago. 1t is not the same as it
was yesterday nor will it be the same
tomorrow as 1t Is now. In Henri Bergsons
familiar phrase, "To exist is to change, to
change is to mature, to mature is to go
on evolving ones self endlessly" Nothing
stands still in the life of man or the society
Of nations. Since 1900, the terrible and
the wonderful have happened with
unique speed that has markedly accel-
Grated the pace Of history, but that fact,
If 1t has tended to befuddle peoples and
governments alike, ought not to frighten
them or make them despair OF moving
forward to better day. In all probability,
when the second halt of this century
closes, our children and our children's
children will be around to drink mid
night toast to us and our time. They may
be living, by then, in genuinely good and
enduring peace. II so, while honoring
us for having worked hard to that end,
they may well say of us that we worried
just bit too much about their chances.
In any case. to them and to the future,
with hope!
A Wise Decision
The Sesquicentennial Commissions