EBB TIDE OF PROGRESS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23505, 20 May 1938, Page 16

EBB TIDE OF PROGRESS

It is becoming increasingly difficult to be optimistic without appearing foolish and blind to the painful realities of our time, says the Western Mail. Cardiff. Nations famous for their culture before the war now deride their former contributions to civilisation Humanitarisnism and the virtues of which it is compounded are derided as weak sentimentalism. Liberty is denounced as a bourgeois prejudice and democracy as a political system which is incompatible with efficient government. The people exist only to be drilled and ruled and directed in the interests of power politics as expounded by the dictators. Lven re ligion is treated as a hostile force which cannot therefore be allowed reasonable liberty. There were many eminent men in the Napoleonic period who also feared that civilisation was doomed and that humanity, like the Gadarene swine, was rushing in madness down a steep place to utter destruction, May we not hops, in spite of all discouragements, that hi tory will repeat itself and that civilisation will escape Ihe doom which threatens it again to-day? It depends on ourselves. on the amount of goodwill, persistent effort in the rigfftt direction, and. above all. dauntless courage in pursuing it. Progress moves not m a steady advance, but by ebb and now. and to-day we are in the trough of the ebb tide.