Professor C. E. M. Jead, of London University, is one of those learned men who manages to attract a great deal of attention when he indulges in public utterance. Recently in an address to students at the City of London Vacation Course in Education for Teachers, he declared that the danger to the present civilization was the contrast between the marvel of man's powers and the imbed ity which he brings to the use of them. "Science," he said, "has given us powers fit for the gods, yet we bring to their use the mentality of. public schoolboys and savages." The professor may be a little hard on the public schools, but it is an undeniable fact that there is a tendency in mankind, when a discovery is made, immediately to ascertain what destructive uses can be made of it. Science has provided in abundance the means to the good life, but has not taught man how to live, indeed it seems to be facilitating the grievous business of dying en masse. How many discoveries, innocent enough in their first implications, have been diverted to bad ends? There are so many that the difficulty is to know where to start detailing them, but probably the most destructive invention that the world has seen has been the internal combustion engine, and its present potentialities of death and destruction. Thus "armed with thunder clad with wings," mankind a wider world commands, and it is not entirely for his own good. Thus speaking of the aeroplane, the lineal descendant of the internal combustion engine, Professor Jead says the "greatest of man's inventions threatened his civilization with destruction. The superman made the aeroplane and the ape had got hold of it" The whole trouble about humanity is that it has become "too clever by half," or, perhaps, it might be stated the other way round that it. is only half clever enough. There has been a lop-sided development in the progress of mankind.
For example take the enormous strides made in the matter of production of natural wealth. Man's ingenuity has increased the production of rubber, coffee and like commodities, improvements in fishing methods nave resulted in better catches at sea, and because mankind's research in these directions has not been paralleled by endeavours to discover means of making use of the greater production, the output of rubber is controlled, while coffee and the surplus hauls of fish are dumped into the sea. Mankind finding out how to make nature yield more profusely of her ughes, has not yet discovered how all of humanity shall profit thereby, and the world is faced with superabundance on the one hand and wretched poverty on the other. Huge forests are being denuded in order that the world shall read the day's news; in some cases the damage is being repaired by reafforestation, in others not, and economists on occasion indulge in fantastic speculations as to how long the world's supply of wood-pulp will last. Of course it may be a matter of argument whether the discovery of the woodpulp process, and the stimulus, it gave to the public press was altogether/a good thing, but those, who deny that it was, will probably also deplore the increase of literacy which created the demand for it. That may be a very cynical view of ore of the aspect: of civilization, but there is something in the contention of Professor Jead that failure to adjust the disparity between man's power and his wisdom is one of the greatest dangers of the present civilization. One of the chief sources of future danger is that mankind is becoming standardized, it has been made too greatly dependent upon machines and other devices for its Amusements, and spends its leisure on standardized pleasures produced for all, instead of the individual providing pleasure for-himself,—a deadening instead of a vivifying process. Why, it may even be expected that the arts will deteriorate, for instead of the millions of earnest seekers, there will be millions of drones interested in "their output.
What is the cure? Obviously it lies in the reduction of the present disparities which Professor Jead perceives. He suggests that no more inventions should be let loose on the world until it is better prepared for their impact. This, he contends would involve the appointing of a board of scientists and philosophers who would give or refuse permits for scientific invention likely to affect human life. It would mean the establishment of a veto on the publication of the results of scientific research, especially those. which enabled mankind to increase its efficiency in slaughter, for at least twenty years. That might, he contended, sound like putting the clock back a couple of decades, but it was not: it was merely saying that unless man could learn to use his powers aright they would put an end to his progress. In such a system, however, there are also dangers. the chief of which would be that to deprive inventors of their immediate rewards thousands of propagandist pamphlets "which This is not a quotation from one oj
have flooded the Far East in recent years. Nor is it an effort to traduce historical fact to prove a case, It comes from "Foreign Affairs, 1919- 1937" By B. L. Hasluck, M.A, and published by the Cambridge University Press. Making a summary of world events since the Great War and compressing it into one slight volume is no easy task, and nobody, not even a historian, is above error, but this single quotation containing so many mis-statements creates depressing thoughts regarding the presentation of this recent incident, and a far greater one developing around us at present, by the historian of some future date.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.