A Safe Place.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 142, 16 June 1906, Page 10

A Safe Place.

There are no snakes in Iceland. There is no safe place on tlhe surface of the globe. To that conclusion, after careful consideration, we must come. If allowed to prey upon the nerves the fact might) drive us to distraction, in which state of mind we might begin a seaich in all corners of the earth for what we knew we could never find. The wiser course — and, strange to say, it is one which we adopt) with singular mity — is to recognise our liability to accident wherever we may be, and never to worry about ifc. \ The other day a case was reported of a woman who died from anxiety about possible diseases. Her fate migbfc be the fate of everybody jf they did not) set a limit to foreboding^ , People are asking whether the first builders of San Francisco, were well advised in choosing a^spot subject) to earthquakes for the 6ife of a great city ; Whether the indomitable folks who are now planning another great city on tflio ruins of the one just destroyed might not take warning from their terrible experience, and choose a safe, or at) least a safer,-, place.. There would be just as much reason in enquiring whether the inhabitants of Naples and the surrounding neighbourhood ought not, in tfheir own interests, to desert a district which provides them with so' many qualms; or in wondering at the temerity of the Japanese, who take no thought for emigrating from a land peculiarly subject to shocks and thrills. Supposing these people — the San Franciscans, the Japanese, the Neapolitans, and all others why fancy tlheir settlingplaces are particularly risky — began to act in a spirit of paltry reasonableness, and Eet out or a search for safety ; whither could they be / recommended to turn their steps? In tJhe first place, according to Professor Milne, a very large part of the earth is subject) to •'worldshaking" earthquakes. This moEt learned of seismologists, considering only the experience of the six years betiween 1899 and 1905, finds that there are thirteen great earthquake regions. The ten worst regions, as Professor Tamer has been reminding us from the columns of The Times, lie approximately in two rings on the earth's surface. The more important ring includes the Alaskan coasti, the Californian coast, the West Indies, the Chilian coast, the soutlh of New Zealand, the Krakatoa region, and Japan. The other ring comprises the Tegion between India and Madagascar, the Azores, and Tasheknd. J\ theory founded on, or assisted by, these circumstances^ is that the globe, once pear-shaped, is continually approaching the spheroidal form under gravitational stress. The gear is bedng crushed into a sphere by its own attraction, and the result is a series of earthquakes, which naturally occur in the weakest 1 places. We have no intention of jpureuing this highly scientific theory, but use ifc merely to show that) the scientists could, and cheerfully would, point out to possible emigrants, Japanese or San Franciscan, the essential weakness of their present position, and the directions in which they would be immune from further shocks. They might be persuaded to come to England, where we have no earthquakes to speak of, and where, as Professor Milne has considerately assured us, there I is no likelihood of our getting any. But, setting aside the obvious objection that we have no room for emigrating nations within our narrow boiders, who can suppose that the Japanese, for instance, would think English weather more endurable than tho risk of Japanese earthquakes '! It) would porbably kill them off in thousands, and if it spartd them, would moke their lives miserable. The enso would be the same everywhere, and with all peoples. If they fled from Nature in one threatening aspect, they would only discover her in an aspect more threatening still — to them. The truOh is that the mass of mankind lives whero it is placed, and no more thinks of moving than of flying to Mars. The deep-rooted sentiment which binds a nation Do ita soil, a man to his town or hamlet, saves a lot of unnecessary worrying. But for the existence of this sentiment chre San Franciscans would be meditating removal on a laTge scale.. They would find their confusion worse confounded elsewhere. By the very human impulse to stay where they aro they are rescued from troublo and disappointment untold. A curious factor in human experience, this necessity which binds people to their own country, whatever the dangers and drawbacks! We do not realise the deptb of its significance till we recognise that it has made all the history that is worth reading, all the progress that counts. The scientists, then, might point) out the safest places. A really safe place cannot be found on land or sea. But t erery nation^ every assemblage of paMo*

tic men, thinks it has found that place which is the safest for its own purposes. And there it means to stick, let Nature war as she may. — St). James's Budget.