Nelson Evening Mail WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1922 ANOTHER WARNING

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 11 October 1922, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1922 ANOTHER WARNING

lb our present civilisation tails into decay it will .not he without warnings irom Mr Lelhrop Stoddard. il would appear that he is something ol an alarmist for he produces books on one great world danger after another. At the same time his books have attracted the attention of the world, and protitled one is not overawed by the terrible pictures be draws, there is little danger of becoming an alarmist also. In his “The .New World of Islam” Mr Stoddard pointed out the dangers which lay in this direction. It appeared at a time when the Near East Conference of Allied Foreign Ministers had modified the Treaty of Sevres, and when riots in India and Egypt, guerilla, warfare in Northern Africa, and outbreaks in Syria were all traced to 1 ” Alohammedan influence. These signs, together with the subsequent developments, would seem to justify the statement then made by this author: —“The entire world of Islam is to-day in profound ferment. From Morocco to China, and from Turkestan to the Congo, the'250,009,000 followers of the Prophet Mohammed, ore stirring to new ideas, new impulses, new aspirations. A gigantic transformation is taking place, whose results must affect all mankind.” In a still earlier book, “The Rising 1 ide of of Colour,” Mr Stoddard tried to show that the ascendancy ot the white race is threatened by the coloured race. Now in a new hook he warns us of still another menace. This lime it is nut from the coloured races without, but from the mental inferior of our own race within. He prefaces the book with this statement: —“The revolutionary unrest which to-day afflicts the entire world, goes far deeper Hum is generally supposed. Its root-caluse is not Russian Bolshevik propaganda, nor the late war, nor the French Revolution, but a process of racial impoverishment, which destroyed the great civilisations of the past, ami which threatens to destroy our own.” In elaboration of this contention, the hook, according to a reviewer. opens with a survey of the structural basis of civilisation. Ah Stoddard lays down a thesis and proceeds to enumerate the dangers which beset us. These are, he says;—(l) The tendency to structural overloading; (2) the tendency to biological regression; (3) the. tendency to atavistic revolt. In further delineation of these abstruse|v worded “laws,” he says the first occurs when “(be social environment outruns inherited capacity. ’ the- second is drawn from the falling birth rate, of the “superior strains,' and the ever-increasing rapidity of the lower; while the third is supplied by the present social unrest. In this Mr Stoddard sees “a vast residue of unadaptable. depreciated humanity, essentially uncivilisablc, and hostile to civilisation, rising in atavistic revolt. There is still another of these “laws,” but it js not numbered oil. This is the tainted genius". “Placed by Nature in the van of civilisation, he goes over to its

enemies. ... As the Under-Man revolts, beta use civilisation is far aliead of him. so the misguided superior revolts because it is far behind , . - • lie is the most pathetic figure in human history.” Causes other than heredity have little or no consideration with Mi’ StoddiU'd, and although the influence of economic conditions has been exaggerated by some ‘‘philosophical historians,” it ns surprising to find a writer on this sublet entirely disregarding that important factor. With Mr Stoddard heredity is everything— environment is nothing. It would seem that modern psychology has invented a series of mental yardsticks for the measurement in human intelligence, for in the next chapter there follows a statistical table, showing the alarming number of ‘morons,” or feeble-minded persons of a higher grade than' idiot. Russian Bolshevism is given as a supreme illustration, and from it universal significance is found of the danger that threatens. Mr Stoddard has a little Utopia of his own—when disease is extirpated and the feebleminded eliminated.