NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13701, 18 March 1908, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE GROWTH OF THE WORLD.

An attractive article on " The Growth of the World," from the pen of the lute Sir Spencer Walpole, appears in the Contemporary Review. Its purpose is "to show how different the world of to-day is from the world of which we read in ancient history. The. world of Homer was the world which surrounded the Aegean. The world o{ the Roman Consulate was the world which surrounded the Mediterranean. The flag of Empire has now moved from the JEgean to the Mediterranean, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. But while, these vast additions have been made to the earth's the world in another sense has become smaller. Steam and electricity have almost annihilated distance; and voyages, which would have had terrors for the boldest two centuries ago, are now undertaken by any pleasure-seeker who has time and money at his command. The Atlantic Ocean itself does not rouse the fears which the- /Egean inspired in the breast of Homer; and the man who takes a ticket for a voyage round the world may be certain of accomplishing his purpose in less time than Jonah must have expected to occupy when he took his ticket, or at any rat* paid his fare, on a vessel trading to Tarshish. Geography has been sometimes called the handmaid of history; and no man, it is certain, can understand the history of any country without some knowledge of its geography. In the same way, however accurately we may know the history of mankind, we shall have an inaccurate idea of it as a whole if we do not realise that the most important factor throughout has not been the struggle of race, or religion, or the revolutions of race and religion, but what, we have ventured to call 'The Growth of the World.' "