SLATER SEES NEW WORLD

Evening Star, Issue 19776, 28 January 1928, Page 24

SLATER SEES NEW WORLD

MODERN RIP UAH WINKLE What does it feel like to come back to the world after eighteen years? Eighteen years ago (says the ‘ Sunday Chronicle’) Oscar Slater vanished from the world when a life sentence of imprisonment was passed on him. Ho has just been released. Like a modern Rip Van Winkle ho has suddenly been plunged into a world where he feels as strange as a man who has gone to the moon. Oscar Slater left the world when women wore leg of mutton sleeves and trailing skirts, and when a few of them were agitating lor the vote, when wireloss broadcasting was unheard of, when the pioneer air pilots were making short hops a few feet above the ground, when motor cars were few and far between compared with to-day, and the cinema was only in its infancy. He comes back to it like a man suddenly plunged forward into a grotesque mechanical future. BEYOND IMAGINING. Amazed and bewildered, he finds himself in a world beyond his most fantastic imagining. Men talk to each other across the Atlantic on the wireless ’phone, electric news bulletins flash the world’s doings at him from the skies, aeroplanes wing their way across continents with the safety of express trains, motor cars teem in the streets, and a turn of a knob brings a broadcast concert from Madrid or Pittsburg into the homo. The world that Slater knew never saw a woman’s legs. Even the exhibition of too much ankle was regarded as indelicate. To-day his astonished eyes sec women with skirts scarcely to their knees going about with a freedom unheard of eighteen years ago. The women of Slater’s day shrouded themselves in voluminous skirts and pinned a funny big hat on top of their long hair. If one had smoked in public she would probably have been mobbed. To-day he walks into a cafe and sees women produce their own cigarette cases and automatic lighters. He sees them order cocktails. And he looks in vain for the long tresses that were in vogue when he vanished from the world. On all sides ho sees a world changed out of recognition. When Slater was sentenced the newspapers chronicled alongside the news of his trial the leat of a French airman who had hopped a few hundred yards in his machine. The headline was; ‘The Unconquered Air.’ That was on May C, 1909. A few days ago, when ho came out of prison, he saw leaping at him from the newspaper contents bills the news of the commencement of a new non-stop flight to India Tho Atlantic has been flown—passenger services by luxurious air liners all over Europe are now a commonplace. Other headlines on the day Slater left the world were; ‘ Lords and Road Hogs,’ ‘How a Motorist Peer Dodges Old Lady,’ ‘Britain Waking Up,’ ‘ Premier’s Statement Regarding Airships,’ ‘Will Beer Be Dearer?’ IS IT A DREAM? To-day he reads of birth control clinics, of trial Channel swimming, quick divorce, fllm stars with princely salaries being mobbed by excited admirers, and racing motor cars flashing along at 800 miles an hour. Dimly, in prison, Slater realised something of the marvels that 'were happening. He had been told things; lie had seen occasional newspapers. But it was impossible to grasp the dazzling miracles of to-day from odd paragraphs. Ho saw the announcement that television sets are shortly to be placed on tho market. It meant nothing—just bewilderment. Ho read of a London business man putting in a telephone call to New York and doing a deal running info thousands ol pounds. His mind refused to grasp it. It seems a strange world to Slater to-day—so strange that he wonders whether lie is not dreaming. He came out of prison io hear the mighty toav of tho citv. “What’s that noise?” be asked. His mind tried to grapple with tho idea of thousands of motors. He couldn’t visualise it. When the car taking him away

from the gaol swept into the stream of traffic lie sat like a man stunned—awed and ,amazed. Tho _ motor cars lie knew wore elumsy-looking contraptions with high seats, noisy engines, and little comfort. Here were purring limousines with automatic cigar lighters, electric windscreen wipers, illuminated signals that told whether they wore turning to right or left, and expensive vanity sets fitted with tortoiseshell and silver. WAR COMB AND GONE. There were low, rakish sports cars with tho power of eighty horses underneath their shining bonnets—huge lorries and baby cars that darted in and out of the traffic like wasps. It was all amazing to Slater. On the day he was sentenced to death the newspapers carried a story about the German menace_ and the Kaiser’s dangerous Imperialism. Since then the war has come and gone, and the world lias been shattered and remoulded. Slater knew of the war, but it had little significance. He could not comprehend what it meant. BEWILDERING CHANGES. To-day he looks at tho map and sees bewildering changes. Thrones have crumbled, the mailed fist of tho exKaiser grasps a woodman’s axe at Doom, Germany is: a republic, and Russia has come through the throes of a bloody revolution to a Communist bureaucracy. Ho visits a friend’s house and hoars an unknown voice boom out from a wireless loud speaker. It tells him what is happening in London, Berlin, Moscow. ... A turn of the knob and ho is listening to a concert from Paris, another turn and a voice is speaking in German. He fools that somehow ho has strayed into a bizarre world of the future. Eighteen years ago life stopped for Slater. Now, suddenly, it begins again. What would it mean to you to go to sleep for eighteen years and awake to a strange, now world?