PROPHECIES FULFILLED.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3136, 25 September 1922, Page 8

PROPHECIES FULFILLED.

(Detroit Free "Press.) When Major Blake, the intrepid English aviator who is endeavoring to circle the globe with an airplane glided down the other evening and parked his machine in the environs of Basra, Asiatic Turkey, another thrilling chapter was written into the history of a bind rich in romance dating back to the earliest times, and which, with all these centuries behind it, has advanced little from the day when Babvloli was the world capital, and Rome was not even a western outpost. For lie it known that the country around Basra and Bagdad and tho other cities in that distant land is almost as primitive as it was hundreds of vears before the Christian era. What a glorious past belongs to that part of the world, and yet how far removed is it from such modern agencies as the aeroplane, which is reported as creating a threat sensation upon its arrival. True, it was hereabouts that Sennacherib, King of Assyria, brought his armed hosts, and destroyed Babvlon, almost on the outskirts ol Basra, and on nearly the same, site now occupied by Bagdad. And Bagdad! Home of Haroun Fl Rasclnd, that choice soul whose nocturnal moanderinus incog, among his subjects have been set forth so entertainingly in narrative form. What a contrast between Aladdin, with his wonderful lamp that in its most magical moments never dreamed of anything so fantastic as an airplane, and the-plucky Britisher who swept down into the Fuphratos Valley for a brief rest, before bopping oft on another leg of the globe-girdling flight. What would be the sensations ot All Baba and Morgiann and all the rest ot those colorful characters if they could come back and watch the evolutions ol a modern manhird. Such a state ol mind is inconceivable. . \nd vet present-day dwellers in Asiatic Turkey, marvelling as thev may at man's ability to mount to the skies, had ample warning of what was to occur. If the coming of an airplane threw them into hysteria it was their own fault. Did not Hahakkuk. the prophet of gloom, long before the days ol Xahopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar sol down on a papyrus scroll tor the enli'ditcnmcnt of all who would take the time to read that "they shall My as the eagle that hasteth to eat." And did not Jeremiah give more than an inkling of a like state of affairs when, about the same period, he asserted probably not without a snort of dissent, and ridicule from some crass unbeliever in the crowd. "Behold he shall fly as an eadc." Perhaps, after all. those ancients we are apt to deride were gifted with "■•eater vision than we are prepared to jjive them credit for possessing.