The Evening Star SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1919.

Evening Star, Issue 17034, 3 May 1919, Page 6

The Evening Star SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1919.

Expibuxce. we are told, teaches fools. Where the lessons are

Not so Black as it Looks.

titter enough- it probably does. But we are all fools in the big eense cf the proverb, and it is difficult- at time* to detect much growth in wisdom. Take the bitter class differences that at present distract society. Five years ago we were forced into battle with our neighbors—and emerged lately to rend one another. If anything could have taught Tn-mVlnd the futility of autocracy it should have been the cataclysmic downfall of Teuton and Turk. Yet Bolshevism struggles as desperately as did Prussia to fasten s new tyranny on civilisation. Had anarchy been capable of profiting by demonstration Russia would have made such a mark on the rebel soul as to have left there for ever the meaning of “ festina fcnte.” Yet in every country in the world to-day revolution runs hot-foot after some sanguinary Utopia. It is no. use pretending that society at present rests on stable foundations. If we refused a few days ago to take as gloomy a view‘of the universe as car friend Dr Eutherford Waddell, we would protest just as vigorously against the optimism which cries “ All’s well” Superficially, at least, all is ill. North, south, east, and west the whole earth travails and groaas. If much of it, as we believe, is a temporary hysteria, there are sounds in addition to make the boldest shudder. Nations must hear them as distinctly as individuals, yet the peacemakers of Paris ran neither “ get out nor get under. 1 Our own Empire hears them as distinctly #rMittel Europe yet we can neither solve

ottr social troubles nor lay our racial ghosts. Iceland, Tibet, and Timbuctoo breathe a deeper peace to-day than the Ganges or ancient Nile. Cap© Town has lost its benignant serenity, and starts uneasily when a wind stirs tho lonely veldt. Dublin has forfeited its wit in the night, and shuffles and glowers like a self-con-fessed thief. Even Brisbane, dared she risk it, would lift tho social lid off “ pour encourager los autrcs.” But look a little closer, and healthy signs, too, are found. Tho strike torch is guttering out in England. The British unionist, restless though he is, and disgruntled still, stops short of anarchy. Spartacism- gathers no moss in Germany. Bolshevism seems a starveling brat in Hungary. Even in Prussia, as tho days go by, millennialism moderates its raucous voice. The world, it appears, at last walks warily, conscious dimly of its drift to self-destruction. If no section has flung away its fetish, all groups .have realised the wisdom of a little patient waiting. If it scorns as necessary to many schools still to burn all boots and bury most maxims, it begins to be accepted at last that a live dog is worth tho skin of a hundred dead lions. In short, wo have all come to realise quite suddenly that there is a time to storm and a time to press the soft pedal. Through sheer force of habit wo have been hammering out recklessly our halfbaked rhapsodies and rages. Now, touched it is clear by the same chilly wind, we have fallen into a solemn hush. There is no need to fathom the pit unless we blindly want to. Even the newspaper representing tho Labor party in tho Dominion agrees at last that New Zealand can become the Promised Land without the shedding of blood. Perhaps Lenin and Trotsky have not murdered in vain.