BACK TO THE STONE AGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 49, 27 February 1937, Page 2 (Supplement)

BACK TO THE STONE AGE.

WHEN "THE MACHINE STOPS."

Dipping into the future, far as human eye can see. Mr. Wa viand Smith finds that it leads back to the' past, and that the whole veneer of civi-j lisation is no more than three meals j thicker than the skin of .Neanderthal j man. His book. "The Machine Stops" i (Male), is in the Wellsian tradition in so far as it seeks a plausible scion- ; tilie theory as its background, hut thereafter developing along very highly seasoned and sensational lines. It is a new and alarming form of corrosion which causes all the trouble, a yellow fog whi«h envelops the world and causes the molecular disintegration of iron and of non-ferrous metals, too. so that in a few days after its first observation bv Professor \Turgatroyd. chief metallurgist. of the day. it turns every machine to rust, a ml. stopping train, car. boat and everything else causes a paralysis of civilisation and a complete return to the stone age. But as the population of England is hundreds of times that of its stone age capacity millions perish of starvation and in the resultant food riots. Two "Noah's Arks" areas of salvation, in one of which the professor labours to discover a new alloy not affected by the corrosion, the other a village where their food supplies are grown, survive to bring back the civilising influence of the machine gun. and. presumably, to start the wicked cycle all over again, with a few intellectuals ami a mass of hard lighting tribesmen as its chief components. The story works out in an exciting climax and there is some intere.if much bitterness, in the author's development of the reactions of humankind to the primal circumstances.