THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JULY 10, 1909. THE FORGOTTEN PAST.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14109, 10 July 1909, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JULY 10, 1909. THE FORGOTTEN PAST.

Tee cabled news that the Society, of Antiquaries is about, to enter upon extensive researches by excavating on the sites of old Salisbury and St. Albans is interesting for a variety of reasons. The places chosen are probably the most promising in England for the purpose contemplated by the society, which is that of obtaining a fuller idea than has yet been obtained • of Roman civilisation as it existed in Great Britain. England has many records of periods far older than the Roman occupation of the country, but however interesting these may be to the naturalist and the antiquarian, it is scarcely possible to regard them as records of anything we should call civilisation. For many thousands of yearshow many, indeed, nobody can guess— the British islands were inhabited, and evidences of the fact, as well as some indications of the kind of people who lived there, and their conditions, have frequently been unearthed in different parts of the country. Weapons, tools, and ornaments of various materials, and showing different degrees of skill in their manufacture, carry the story back, step by step, to the days of primeval man, and even seem to associate him with the remains of elephants and other animals that must have ceased to exist in England for many thousands of years. That such researches and , discoveries are interesting, and for some purposes may be highly instructive, is probably true; but the interest is of a wholly different kind from that which attaches to the relics of past civilisations like that of Rome, which has a hundred lessons for the world to-day. The age in which we live is one in which the sense of great and rapid achievement in many directions tends to make us think of the present, and to some extent of the future, as the only parts of the world's progress worthy of much attention. So much has been done in the last century so much more appears, to be doing in the century lately begun ; that most people are apt to look almost with contemptif indeed they care to look at all— at the civilisations, and therefore at the lessons, of the past. And perhaps new communities like our own are even more exposed to such temptations as this than those whose circumstances still link them more closely with the past In countries like New Zealand and Australia the distant past seems to have

little or no existence, and certainly a study of the history of the ancient peoples of the_se islands— such a thing could be compiled—would have little either of real interest or instruction for us. For us, therefore, it may ,be especially advantageous '" to have our attention turned from time to time to the relics of past civilisations, and the lessons which their successes and their failures may still have for ourselves. Our civilisation, of which we are, consciously or unconsciously, so proud, is only very partially our own. For the most part the civilised world of to-day owes its knowledge, its social and political ideas, even its inventions and discoveries, to the civilisations that have gone before it. The Romans brought their arts and sciences, their social and political ideals, with them to Britain less than two thousand, years ago; and though they left the country five hundred years later, they left much behind them which has formed no inconsiderable part of the civilisations that have followed it. For a good many thousands of years before Caesar arrived, civilisation, with all its problems, had existed in many parts of the world, and the records of art and science, of literature and thought, as well as of war and a great political system which the excavations of the British Society of Antiquaries may disclose, will, like our own developments in these directions, be themselves a tribute to older civilisations, that had passed, or were passing away, in the time of the Roman conquerors. One thing they .will certainly tend to make clear, which modern nations have been too apt to forget, that, in the words of the Hebrew prophet, " that which hath been, it is that which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun."

There has probably ' been no greater nation in the world's history than that of Ancient Rome. Great in war, and not less great in the arts of peace, all the nations of Europe owe more than they appreciate to her and her people, and our own nation is very far from being an exception. In some respects, indeed, • the British race has learned the lessons, and indeed imitated her methods, to an extent that has suggested to other nations that Britain was not only the most Roman of Rome's distant provinces in ancient times, but has in some unaccountable way inherited many of her political characteristics in later ages. Like Ancient Rome, the later Britain has been a conquering nation; like her, too, she has seemed to find the known' world almost too small for her desire and power,; of annexation f■. and, . like .-Rome also, she has largely 'benefited -•■ most •? of the countries she • has ' acquired. Her laws, her science, her arts, 'have been spread over half the earth—a somewhat larger contract than it seemed in the days of the Caesars— and it may fairly be claimed by us, as it could; be 'by ancient Rome, that on the whole the world and its people have been the gainers. ..Today we are engaged upon the problem of consolidating the Empire which the enterprise of the race has founded, and the task is not a new one. It has been attempted more than once before, and notably by the great nation the records of whose successes and failures are being dug for in England to-day. Rome has passed, as Greece passed before her, and Persia, Babylonia, and Egypt before them. The records they have left, are astonishing in their greatness, but most valuable of all in the warnings they one and all supply, that when grow selfish, and cease to promote the higher ideals of social and political well-being for humanity, no matter how great they have been in power and knowledge, in science or in art, they fall, and soon become a portion of the all but forgotten past. ■ ;' - ~ _