EUROPE TO-DAY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 23, 24 December 1938, Page 9

EUROPE TO-DAY

EUROPE IN THE LONG AGO. W e have almost finished our Grand Tour of the Continent. Wp have spent over half a hundred weeks travelling up hill and down dale, in cities and villages, ip tije fgr north apd the tap soptii. Now, in a few minutes, we will made a pilgrimage down naif a hundred centuries. Somewhere about 3QQP 8.0. began t)iQ migration of the Aryan races trppi Asia—possibly pi what ig pq\y Russia in Asia. They came as conquerors info the rypst, great wfiyps pf tliepi, p|l siiiiifar m ouiid and with au imperfect but a common language base, though they did not all speak the samp tongue. As they slowly colonised lyjnit is; now Europe they established themselves as in’ four iiiam groups— Celtic, Giecpr-ltaljau, Tpptppic; and Slavonic. Recorded European history does pot begin for another thousand years —and that beginning we find among the islands and coasts of the Aegean Sea, developing ip Crete and at Myceanae. Greek political organisation gre\y rapidly into the form oi the city statp. Maritime and commercial development followed, find between I(H0 and 500 13. C. a highly organised and wonderfully intellectual and artistic activity prevailed ’in South-East Europe. Indeed, it has beep said th;it there is nothing in the world to-day w|iicli is not Greek in origin, an exaggeration which points towards a trutfi.

Progress was ever westward, and when Greece burned herself out Ropie began to kindle at the flapie. Roipe was traditionally founded in the ' Stir century, and while she was) growing the Greeks were winning glory apd thpn losing it—Alexander ' striding the world. Rome’s dfiy dawfiecl in splendour about 2QO B.C. Duripg ijie next 170 year,s the doipinicu of the Romans expanded. Julius Daesar marched to victory subduing what is now France, and even leading to the mastery pf Britain. In his day Europe east of the Rhine apd south of tjie Danube was under his heel—(G)