"THE MACHINE."

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 51, 1 March 1930, Page 21

"THE MACHINE."

Babiudrauath Tagore, the great Hindu poet, has joined the ranks of the increasing number of observers who are alarmed lest the coming of the machine age destroy Western civilisation, lie feels, like many others, that man is going to be the victim of progress in losing his individuality and personality and freedom to monsters of steel, of which he becomes the slave. To render this modern tendency more accessible, the poet has imagined a drama of singular power. He transports us to the domains of somo rajah who has built a monstrous machine which permits him, at will, to hold back the torrents that would fertilise the land. In this way life and death for an immense population in one of his provinces are at his mercy. Enemies of the rajah seize the machine and utilise it with inhuman ferocity against the province of which the people refuse to submit to their tyranny. Finally it is the rajah himself . who sacrifices his life in a successful effort to destroy the machine and save his people. It is a gripping story called "The Machine," and also a cry of. alarm to Western" civilisation which places itself gradually under the sign of steeJ. " ' i