PROPHETS OF DOOM

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 July 1939, Page 12

PROPHETS OF DOOM

PREDICTIONS NOT ALL FULFILLED “It is a dangerous thing,” said Mr Lloyd George in the House of Commons the othei' day, “to predict in the present world.” And who should know better than he? When the Armistice was signed Mr Lloyd George at Guildhall spoke of “this solemn moment of triumph. . . this great hour which rings in a new era and which is going to lift up humanity to a higher level of existence for all ages in the future.” That was how ho and others felt and what he and others hoped would be. But vain is the augur’s voice. That glowing prophecy is but “a handful of grey ashes” to-day. One is sometimes tempted to believe that Cicero was right when he said, in his treatise on Divination, “I reckon the best prophet and the best guesscr to be much the same,” says Mr J. B. Firth writing in the London “Daily Telegraph.”

Disraeli once observed that “of all forms of error prophecy is the most gratuitous.” But that did not keep him from prophesying when the mood was on. Two years before the Aus-tro-Prussian War of 1866 he said that “Prussia was a country without bottom and could not maintain a war for six weeks.” Prophets who speak with the studied ambiguity of an oracle do not deserve the name. Yet if they do not leave themselves a loophole of escape they are almost sure to be confounded by events. It is an ugly dilemma. If a prophet bases his prediction on the enlightened common sense of his fellows they are su,re to let him down, for sometimes the herd rush violently down steep places: if he goes on the Carlylean principle that mankind are “mostly fools” they are sure to surprise him by extraordinary manifestations of good sense and disinterestedness.

The future, in fact, is unpredictable. Nevertheless, the future is occasionally predicted. But “it needs heavensent moments for this skill,” and the wisest prophets—l speak, of course, only of the profane—project their vision into the distant rather than the immediate future.

One of the best historical prophecies I know was Gouverneur Morris’s prediction, in 1801, of the coming development of the United States: “As yet we only crawl along the outer shell of ou,r country. The interior excels the part we inhabit in soil, in climate, in everything. The proudest empire in Europe is but a bajub'le compared (to what America will be, must be, in the course of two centuries, perhaps of one.”

FRENCH REVOLUTION. That was. the utterance of a true seer, and it is more striking than his well-known predictions of catastrophe as he watched in Paris the opening stages of the French Revolution. The certain coming of a Revolution in France had been clearly foretold by Lord Chesterfield 20 years before its outbreak. So, and for as long a time, the downfall of the Tsarist regime had been confidently predicted if it should become deeply involved in a disastrous war. Yet in both cases revolution might have been long postponed and possibly averted if France and Russia had had more resolute Kings and the Kings had had bolder Ministers. Burke acquired the reputation of

being “the prince of political prophets” on the strength of his pessimistic forecasts of the Terror and “the long war” which he felt sure must follow.

If the story of Pitt’s prophecy when news came of Mack’s surrender at Ulm and Napoleon’s march on Vienna be authentic, the prediction deserves a leading place of honour. “All is lost,” exclaimed some one at the table. “You are mistaken,” said Pitt. “There is yet hope if I can succeed in stirring up a national war in Europe—a Avar which ought to begin in Spain.” This does not look to me quite like a genuine improvisation at a shattering moment. Yet only a statesman could make it.

Many were prescient’enough to predict the American War of Independence, knowing the stock from which so many of the colonists had sprung and the fretful impatience of all Government control in their blood, and reasing the extreme unwisdom of imposing taxes across the wastes of the Atlantic. Once the French menace to New England’s vast hinterland had been removed by British help the Colonists were almost certain to assert their independence—and they did. Predictions based on reflection are alono valuable: the rest are only fit, as Bacon said, for Winter talk by the fireside. To the latter category belong the “Centuries” or Nostradamus, the 16th century “Old Moore.” Yet he foretold Napoleon in most uncanny fashion.

Un Empereur naistra pres d’ltalie. Qui a I’empire sera vendu bien cher. Dirons avec quels gens il se ralie.

Qu’on trouvera moins Prince que boucher. —old French, which, translated, reads: “An Emperor will be born near Italy avlio will cost the Empire dearly. It is said that whatever peoples are in association Avith him Avill find him less a Prince than a butcher.”

Those lines point straight to the Corsican, and prophets, like kings, are not bound to time. The same Nostradamus prophesied that “England’s great Empire” Avould last “more than 300 years.” Happily he did not indicate the exact starting point. Dr. Inge, 10 years ago, Avrote that “the very small area of Great Britain makes it inevitable that Ave shall cease to be one of the Great Powers of the World.” As he was then writing with 2,000 A.D. in vieAV, it only leaves us another 60 years of greatness. But the Apocalypse of Dr. Inge may be as full of errors as that of Lamartine, Avho in 1843 Avas bold enough to project himself into 1943 and write “a retrospective sketch of the Avorld’s progress.” He saAv the U.S.A, with a population of 73,000,000, omnipotent in the NeA\’ World; Russia as the arch-enemy of liberty and freedom, and his beloved France, of couj’se, the admired benefactress of the Avorld.

“Where is England?” asks an anxious enquirer.

“Make yourself happy.” replies Lamartine. “She has not disappeared like another Atlantis, but |he continues to Avork out her destiny and to undergo the fate of all exclusively commercial peoples. Behold Tyre and 1 Sidon; then Carthage; at a later day Pisa and Florence, Genoa and Venice; last, the Netherlands. All these States have been rapidly eclipsed .after shining ..like meteors. .The part of England Avas grander, because her stage Avas more extensive. . . But her course is not different and her fate is the same.”

Apparently Lamartine saw England in a sort of Purgatorial state, paying retribution for her past misdeeds and

too exclusively mercantile a policy. All her colonies had gone—Canada first of all—and France had magnanimously restored Gibraltar to Spain! Dr. Goebbels and Signor Gayda often compose similar variations on the same theme.

The immediate doom of the Papacy has been pronounced as often as that of the late Sick Man of Europe—first styled so nearly 400 years ago—who since the War has entered upon so surprising a convalescence. England survived Shelburne’s atrabiliar prediction that if the Americans got thpix- independence “the sun of England would set and her glories be eclipsed for ever.” Yet he had seen how transient was the eclipse of the glories of France caused by the loss of French Canada—“a few acres of snow.” . .

Virile nations recover swiftly from defeat if they set mind and will upon recovery: the victox- may soon sink into a slough of despond. Heino’s “Letters from Paris,” written in the Thirties of last century, contain some remarkable predictions. Fox- example, he wrote in 1832: “I do not believe that there will be a German revolution very soon, still less a German Republic, and, come what may, I shall never , see the latter. But I am certain that when we have long,decayed in ou,r graves .there will be strife in Germany with word and sword, for the Republic is an idea, and Germans never yet abandoned an idea till they had fought- it out to its last consequences. That still waits fulfilment —for the Weimar Republic had no fair trial—but another German prophecy of Heine’s is in the way of present accomplishment. For he said that one day the old German gods would rise from their graves and Thor would swing his giant hammer among the Gothic cathedrals. Even now his arm is raised to strike. ■ No modern prediction has been more tragicaly fulfilled than Sir Henry Maine’s unheeded warning: “Nationalism is a disruptive force which impels grea,t majorities in great States •to aggression and tyranny and impels minorities to disobedience and rebellion. The principle of self-determina-tion is studded with the dragon’s teeth.

Yet Nationalism is an honourable and inspiring principle, and the law of Self-Determination in itself is just and' sound. But always exceptis excipiendis. The extreme* fervours of Nationalism have helped to make Ruskin's saying come true, “The sun will be redder still.” It is- bad enough when a Major Prophet feels compelled to predict recurrent Days of Wrath, but when such soothing words as he adds by way of solace and encouragement are turned to cruel mockery, it is hard indeed. Charles Pearson, whose “National Life and Character” startled for a while the pre-war world out of its complacency in 1893 placed on record his conviction that war would never be wholly banished. He said: “The vision of inspired Manchester men that the Angel of Peace would descend in a drapery of untaxed calico is still as far from accomplishment as the vision seen in Patmos.” Then came the crumb of comfort: “But it seems possible to hope that war, terrible and to some extent pitiless as it must always be, may come to be conducted without intentional injury to non-combatants and with the smallest possible' damage to private property.” Where stands that “hope” now? It went with the wind of the first aeroplane. A study of predictions leads to rather melancholy conclusions, for prophets, except they have an axe to grind, are in these days a pessimistic crowd rather than a goodly fellowship. It takes courage, when the heavens are cracking, to “judge a man’s wisdom by his hopes.”