THE NEXT CENTURY

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 128, 1 June 1935, Page 21

THE NEXT CENTURY

OUR LIVING HABITS

WHAT MAY BE FORESEEN

j What changes will happen in the t next hundred years? Which cards will i be played in the game between Fate - and Man I am unable to tell; I can only describe the appearance of some of the cards in the pack, writes Lord t Dunsany in the "Sunday Times." Our t course may go this way or that, as a f game of cards goes, dominated by petrol or by electricity or by steam, ; or even by some new power that may ; be a stronger suit than any of them. One great change we can sureiy j count on, and that is that we shall use , to full advantage the inventions we . have already. The grandparents of . many of us, for instance, when trains were invented, had their carriages put upon trucks when they wished to , travel, and travelled •thus, sitting in their own carriages. But when ; brighter minds thought of the Pull- ' man they made a better use of steam. In far more recent times there were . people who, wishful to be motorists t and yet regretting the horse, bought ; things that were called electric landau- ; lettes; there was a splash-board in ' front to prevent the horse throwing up mud or getting his tail over the r reins, and there was a footman beside 1 the driver to hold the horse's head when necessary; only there was no horse. And let us not laugh too bois- , terously at the electric landaulette, \ until we are sure that we harness no new power to some pre-war chariot of . Bodicea—pre-Roman war, I mean. A RELIC. Have you ever noticed,' for instance, the hole in the top of all shades for 1 electric candles? You must have; the 1 dazzling flash of it hits your eye when- ■ ever you stand up. That hole is for ' the flame to come through, without i scorching the shade. ■ "But there is no flame with an elec- . trie candle," say I, like Cortez, or ' Galileo, or Newton. '■ "Why! JSfor there is!" says the astonished world, noticing it for the first time; a world that has only yet got : eye, shade, and globe correctly aligned in about half its houses, the other half having it in this order: eye, globe, shade. The proper use of electric light is, of course, well understood by thousands of people, but not by millions; and one of our greatest tasks is for the mass of even educated people to keep pace with the inventions of the few hundred brains that are transforming the way of the world. Few who have been asked to. prophesy can hope to prophesy rightly, but one prophecy I will make that I think will be fulfilled, for if I point out an obvious gap in our domestic civilisation, somebody will probably fill it. It is this. Everyone must have noticed that in large houses the hall, the staircase, and the two or three rooms most used are the best decorated, while back-passages and bootholes, and stairs that are seldom seen, are dingily whitewashed and bare. * But now there is in many large houses a part of the house as much used as a grand staircase; yet they haven't learned, or rather they haven't thought, what to do with it, and it remains dingier than any back-passage. That is the wall of the lift; the lift itself may be ornate with brass and leather, but a dingy and desolate wall confronts the eye during the whole journey. A FOREST. What treatment do I suggest for it? Not separate pictures as on other walls, for the eye would scarcely have the time to appreciate them. I think that one large picture of all trees going up and up through a forest would be the most appropriate; monkeys and parrots could be thrown in here and there, much more that can be left to the artist. Or the tower of a castle of Fairyland might give sufficient variety, if it had plenty of windows with suit- ; able folk at each. ; But this is only one step, and a short one, upon the long journey of catching ' up with the possibilities of our own in- ' ventions; and crowding upon their ; heels come not only the inventions of the future,.but the further develop- ' ments of ones we already have. There : is scarce time to touch on them in a short article. But greater than the i problem of speed, of electric power, or any mechanical wonder, is this one problem that should occupy all our ' foresight. How is man, rapidly becoming more and yet more powerful, ■ to use his strength wisely? ; It is that wisdom, if he come by it, and old simple Nature, that will guide i man in the future; he was guided 1 through the forests somehow when ; they were full of wolves, and we can . only hope.that he will be guided yet 1 through a world that is full of fac- : tories and petrol stations. We must consider the possibility that either or < both of these guidances may one day 1 turn mankind right back from the path i of 100 miles- per hour, right back from i the motor-car and even the tram to a ; simpler way of life, right back to his ] old friend the horse and his old home : the farm, away from wonders that are 1 noticeably overtaxing his brain, away i from tinned foods and from many a < modern wonder that is not yet finally j classified under the headings of Bless- : ings and Curses. This may easily ■ happen. J THE TEST OF WAR. ♦ \ The astonishing progress of machin- . ery dictated by the fifty or a hundred . inventive brains now in the world may get out of the grasp of humanity, and so far ahead of the bulk of us that we shall fall gasping behind, resigning the I effort to catch up. Or we may be tested by that reality • that has always tested history, and i that has tested us already; we may be ' tested again by war. And it may be . found, and I believe that one day it will be, that machinery under that i test is more brittle than man. When | machines turn against each other, the howitzer and the bombing aeroplane i against the train and factory, it is not i difficult to imagine that our people J might rise from that wreckage simpler but no less grand. • ' The Japanese lived for centuries i without stone houses, compelled by the c strength of the earthquake. It is not impossible that that other disaster, war, which bides its time like the earth- 1 quake, may one day turn Europe away i I from destructible things to dwell in an 1 J older simplicity. i