The Evening Star SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1932. AN AGE OF HOPE.

Evening Star, Issue 20996, 9 January 1932, Page 12

The Evening Star SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1932. AN AGE OF HOPE.

To-day we are so constantly being told that humanity is retrogressing and that civilisation is on the decline that it is well to realise the other side of the case. Writing in the current number of the ‘ Hibbert Journal,’ its editor, Professor L. P. Jacks, enumerates some of the saving forces of civilisation. Ever since the Great War, and particularly in recent days of trade depression, “ the cry of civilisation in ‘ danger ’ has become the text for an immense output of gloomy writing, and Jeremiah has become a best seller.” In Germany alone 170,000 copies of Spengler’s ‘ Decline of the West ’ have been sold. The popular heroes in fiction are those who succeed in making a horrible mess of their lives, usually through spectacular sex antics. Civilisation is depicted as moving to that catastrophe gloomily foretold by the Marxians and certain religious sects. Biological degeneration, political incompetence, economic greed, and the general permeation of life by cant, humbug, and hypocrisy blot out all hope. Yet, as Professor Jacks points out, the dangers at the present moment , are no greater than they have often been in the past or are likely often to be in the future. We have just become more acutely aware of them.' To be forewarned should be to be forearmed if we can avoid the cowardly fears such knowledge tends to bring. Civilisation is always a dangerous enterprise in such a world as this, hard to make “ safe ’’for civilisation or for democracy. Yet there is the deeper fact that man is naturally a danger-facing animal, equipped by the constitution of his mind and of his body to assert himself in spite of difficulties. We have reached our present heights; the powers that have brought us so far will develop civilisation to higher issues in the future; we have no reason to anticipate their failure. It has never been a “ walkover,” nor will it ever be. The conditions of hard fighting against heavy odds are really congenial to man as a dangerfacing animal. Even were universal peace achieved, man’s heroic qualities would st ; T be needed to sustain it from day to day. “ The history of an advancing civilisation is the history of a crisis perpetually faced and mastered, its fortunes becoming more critical and not less with every step of the advance. A civilisation which has no crisis to face is a contradiction in terms.” We have these qualities, the faithfulness of trustees, the skill of the competent, the courage of the brave. Truly they overlap and fuse at many points. Yet none is enough without the others: tho trustee must also acquire skill and be brave, and each must be “ a highly vitalised personality, with his wits about him and his energies under control.” There are such persons, and they are tho saving forces of civilisation. Professor Jacks goes on, however, to warn us that we have not enough of these forces: they do not yet exist in sufficient degree to ensur.) the permanence of what we have built up. There is enough unfaithfulness all over the world, enough incompetence and enough -cowardice to expose us to grave peril. But again there is no ground for thinking that J he saving forces of to-day are less vigorous and active than in any previous age. Probably they are more fiercely opposed by their contraries, yet this only serves to quicken them with new energy and resolution to cause them to draw more closely together and enter into world-wide unions for meeting the foe with a common front. And this should inspire us with confidence and joy in the age into which we have been born, and make us eager to join in the battle with all our powers. The issue will still remain uncertain. “ A sudden inroad of weariness and despair, a spasm of cowardice and irresolution, an outbreak of distrust and mutiny in the ranks of the Best, and the Worst might conquer and civilisation be lost. . . . Inwardly, however, 1 feel that the Best will win through, fortified in that conviction by a study of the past, though unable to give proof of it. But it will be a near and the. a will be many casualties.” Mechanisation and standardisation are seen by some as unmitigated evils, but Professor Jacks sees further than this—that they are just what humanity needs to clear the way, prepare the ground and prepare the means for consolidating and organising its forces with tools, weapons, and commissariat for its next battle forward. And so the mechanical age can be but the prelude to another, in which man will do again what he has so often done in the past, by asserting his mastery over the conditions that confront him and show himself greater than any machine. Man is not really so easily standardised: he is too great for that. Finally, as well as the human factor, there is what Professor Jacks calls the Fact. “When all our theories have had their say, our disintegrating ‘ isms ’ done their worst, and our new religions been duly advertised and proit will be found that the issue is ultimately decided not by them, but by the Fact. If we penetrate to the fact, we penetrate to tho winning power. This is the divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may, by our ‘ isms,’ our propaganda, and our new religion.” It is to be found in our knowledge between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong, and in our general sense of decency; and it is on the side of skill, trusteeship, and courage, which are the saving forces of civilisation, A call to play the man, and not the fool, is sounding universally all over the civilised world. It summons the best elements of all nations to come forth and stand together for battle against the worst. And men are not deaf to the call. The world just now is passing through dark times, but the splendid courage of, the best men everywhere in standing up to their reverses fills us with hope for the future. It makes a new bond of union between the nations. Never was th,ere loss cause for d'espain,