A REMARKABLE FORECAST

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 10 March 1928, Page 16

A REMARKABLE FORECAST

In Victor Hugo’s famous novel, “.Ninety Three,” dealing witli the devolution, a leading menioer oi tile Committee or TubUc touiety makes a declaration on some of tne ideals of tne itovolutionaries, which, embody rather strikingly some or our up-to-uatc methods in dealing with land and a universal settlement of tho Bums. it is in many ways strikingly propnetic. inter alia, lie says: —“J. wish the general exiien.se reduced to its most simple expression gild paid by the social surplus.” Asked wnat he meant by that, lie replies; “This: hirst suppress parasitisms —of tne priest, the judge and the soldier. After that turn your riciies to account, lour lung manure into the sewer; cast it into the furrow. Tnree parts ot the soil are waste land; clear up h'rance; suppress useless pasture gi ounds; divide the communist lands. .Let each man have a farm and each farm a man. You will increase a hundredfold in social product. At this moment Trance only gives her peasants meat four days in the year; well cultivated, sue would nourish three hundred millions of men —all .Europe. Utilise Nature, that wondrous and unappreciated ally. Make every wind ton ior you, every waterfall, every magnetic flash. The globe has a sut>terranean network of veins; there is in this network a prodigious circulation of water, oil, fire. Pierce these veins. Make this'water feed your fountains, this oil your lamps, this lire your hearths, Reflect upon the movement of the waves the flux and reflux, the ebb and flow of the tides; what is the ocean!* An enormous liver allowed to waste. How stupid is earth not to make use oi the sea!”