THE PEACE OF THE JUNGLE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3430, 9 December 1919, Page 29

THE PEACE OF THE JUNGLE.

A DANCE OF DEATH.

By Constant Readeb,

" The Peaoq of the Jungle is beyond all telling" exclaims Mr William Beebe in the opening chapter of "Jungle Peace." "The war has been a gigantio Dance of Death," declare Messrs Victor Branford and Patrick Geddes in their introduction to "Our Social Inheritance," one of tho series of volumes devoted to considering " The Making of the Future." A view of things which depicts the inhabitants of the Jungle at Peace and the inhabitants of the civilised world engaged in "A Dance of Death" is so arresting and startling as to cause two books, poles apart in subject matter and treatment, to_ be brought into close conjunction for serious consideration. The moral, of course, is that conveyed alike in the scriptural adage, " Go to the Ant, thou Sluggard," or more modernly by M. Maeterlinck in "The Life of the Bee" that man has yet much to learn from those which are somewhat erroneously called the "lower" animals. To appreciate the scope and gather" the contents of these two most interesting and attractive books, it may be well to quote from the introductions. In his opening chapter, entitled " Jungle Peace," Mr Beebe Bays: —

After creeping through slime-filled holes beneath the shrieking of swift metal, after splashing one's plane through companionable clouds three miles above the little jagged hero-filled ditches, and dodging other audden-born clouds of nauseous fumes and blasting heart of steel; after these, one craves thoughts of comfortable homes, sweet apple orchards, or ineffable themes of opera. And when nerves have cried for a time " enough" and an unsteady hand threatens to turn a joy-stick into a sign-post to Charon, the miriH seeks amelioration —some symbol of worthy content ajid peace —and, for my part, I turn with all desire to the jungles of the tropics, y If one looks the jungle straight in face, and transcribes what is seen, there is evolved technical science, and until this can be don 9 with accuraoy and discretion, one can never feel worthy now and then of stealing quietly up a side isle of the great green wonderland, and as I have done m these pages, looking obliquely at all things, observing them as actors and companions rather than as species and varieties; softening facts with quiet meditation, leavening science with thoughts of the'sheer joy of existence. It should be possible, occasionally to achieve tin's and yet to return to science enriched and with enthusiasm, and again to play some little part in the great physical struggle—that wonderful strife which must give to future _ peace and contentment new appreciation, a worthier enjoyment. It is possible to enter a jungle and become acutely aware of poison fang and rending claw—much as a pacifist considers the .high advantage of righteous war. But it is infinitely more wonderful and altogether satisfying to slip quietly and receptively into the liteeof the jungle, to accept all things as worthy and reasonable; to sense the beauty, the joy, the majestic serenity of this age-old fraternity of nature,_ into whose sanctuary man's entrance is unnoticed, his absence unregretted. The peace of the . jungle is beyond all telling. Mr Beebe is the curator of birds in the New York Zoological Park and director of the Tropical Record Station. Mr Victor Branford is a member of the Board of Sociological Studies in the University of London. Mr Patrick Geddes is professor of botany in the University of St. Andrews, and director, of the, Cities and Town-plan-ning Exhibition. In their introduction to the series of volumes on "The Making of the Future" Messrs Branford and Geddes say : Since the industrial revolution there has gone on an organised sacrifice of men to things, a large-scale subordination oi life to machinery. During a still longer period there has been a growing tendency to value personal work in terms of wealth. To the millionaire has. in effect, passed the royal inheritance of "right divine:" Things have been in the saddle and ridden mankind. ■ The cult of force in statecraft has been brought to logical perfection in Prussian "f rightfulness." The cult of "profiteerihg" in business has had a similar goal in the striving for monopoly by ruthless elimination of rivals, Prussianism and profiteering are thus twin evils. Historically they have risen together. Is it not possible they are destined to fall together before the rising tide of a new vitalism.

The reversal of all these tendencies, mechanistic and- venal, would be the preoccupation of a more vital area than that from which we are escaping. Its educational aim would be to think out and prepare the needed transition from a machine and money economy towards one of Life. ■ Personality, and Citizenship. The war has been a gigantic Dance of Death, for which modern Business, with its associated politics, has been the prolonged rehearsal. ts it not now the turn of Life to take the floor and call tbo tune, and if so, on a scale of corresponding magnificence. For the war was not merely the poisonous fruit of pitiless competition and machiavellian diplomacy. It was_ also a spiritual protest and rebound against the mammon of materialism. In its nobler aspects and finer issues, its heroisms and self-sacrifices, did not the war hold proof and promise of renewing Life liberated from a long repression? And may not the pursuit of personal wealth grow less exigent, as we gain a sense of social well-being expressed in betterment of environment and enrichment of fife? May not the struggle for existence within the nations, and even across they frontiers, be increasingly replaced by the orderly culture of life, in its full cycle from infancy to age. and at all its expanding levels from homo and neighbourhood outwards ? Those who foresee, in sequel to the war. a social rebirth, with accompanying moral purgation will furnish to all these rmestinns. answers coloured by their hones. The fears of the pessimists wifi dictate a contrary set of replies. To substantiate these hopes, to arrest'these fears is needed

a doctrine that not only goes beyond the Germanic philosophies, winch before the war dominated our universities, but also is corrective of their defects. _ The ‘‘idealisms” of these recently fashionable philosophies were bastard offspring _of archaic thought detached from the living world. Such abstract idealisms must be replaced by definite ideals, concrete and human, if all men of goodwill are to be brought together for the making of a new and better civilisation. So may men inherit the ancient promise of .“peace on earth to men of goodwill.” This inheritance of “peace on earth to men of goodwill” has close relation to ‘‘the peace of the jungle,” which is “beyond all telling.” Thus Mr Beebe’s book takes precedence of that of Messrs Branford and Geddes. In other words, man’s social inheritance. is in direct descent from “this age-old fraternity of nature.” And Mr Beebe has wonderful things to tell and wonderful scenes to describe of that age-old fraternity. The scene of Mr Beebe’s Is ature stories is British Guiana. As a result of a two weeks’ voyage en route from the United States to his destination, he has evolved three or four travel sketches, the tone and tenor of _ which may be gathered from one sentence in hi s chapter on “Islands.” ' “Any guide book,” writes Mr Beebe, “will give the area, population, afhusements, best hotels (or the least objectionable ones), summary of history, and the most important exports. But no one has ever attempted to tell of the soul of these islands —or even of the? individuality of each, which is very real and distinct. This is what Mr Beebe has succeeded in doing. He has set forth the soul of these tropical islands of the West Indies. Take, for instance, the following from the chapter “Hoatzins at Home”:—• The flight of the hoatzin resembles that of an over-fed hen. Ihe hoatzin’s vo.ce is no more melodious than the cry of a peacock, and less sonorous "‘than an alligator’s roar. Ihe ' bird’s grace is batrachian rather than avian, while the odour of its body resembles that of no bird untouched by dissolution. Still, zoologically considered, the hoatzin js probably tae most remarkable and interesting bird living on the earth to-day. It has v successfully defied time and space. For it the dial of the ages has moved more slowiv than for the rest of organic life, and although living and breathing with us to-day, yet its world is an affair of two dimensions—a line of thorny saplings threaded along the muddy banks of a few tropical waters. A bird in a cage cannot escape, and may be found mflnth after month, wherever the cage is placed. A stuffed bird in a case may resist disintegration for a century. But when we go to look for the bluebirds which nest in the orchard, they may have flown half a mile away in their search for food. The plover, which scurries before us to-day on the beach, may to-night be far away on the first lap of his seven thousand-mile flight to the southward. The hoatzin’s status lies rather with the caged bird. In November in New York City an Englishman from British Guiana said to me, “Go to the Berbice River, and at the north end of the town of New Amsterdam in front of Mr Beckett’s house you will find hoatzins.” Six months later as I drove along a tropical river road I saw three hoatzins perched on a low thorn bush at the river’s edge in front of <a house. And the river was the Berbice and the house that of Mr Beckett. Thus are the hoatzins independent of space, as all other flying birds know it, and in their classic reptilian affinities — voice, actions, arms, fingers, habits — they bring close the dim epochs of past , time and renew for our inspection the youth of bird life in the eartlp It isdiscouraging ever to attempt to translate habits fraught with so profound a significance into words, or to make them realistic even with the aid of photographs. The nest of the hoatzin is invariably built over the water; the reason for this being that when he is attacked and no other way of escape presents itself, he dives straight down into the water. Mr Beebe actually witnessed this feat which sets the hoatzin apart from all modem land birds, as the frog is set apart from a swallow. Tho description of this dive is very vivid; —

The young hoatzin stood erect for a instant, and then both wings of the little bird were stretched straight back, not folded, bird wise, but dangling loosely and reaching well beyond the body. For a considerable fraction of time he leaned •forward. Then without effort, without apparent leap or jump he dived straight downward, as beautifully as a" seal, direct as a plummet and verv swiftly. There was a scarcely noticeable splash, and as I »gazed with real awe, I watched the widening ripple which undulated over the muddy water—the only trace of the whereabouts of the young bird. It seemed- as if no one, whether ornithologist, evolutionist, poet, or philosopher, could fail to be profoundly impressed at the sight we had seen. Here I was in a very real, a very modern boat, with the honk of motor horns sounding from the river road a few yards away through the bushes, in the shade of this tropical vegetation in tne year nineteen hundred and sixteen; and yet the curtain of the past had been lifted, and I had been permitted a glimpse of what must have been common in the millions of years ago. It was a tremendous thing, a wonderful thins: to have seen, and it seemed to dwarf all the strange sights which had come to me in all other parts of the earth's wilderness. I had read of these habits and had expected them, but like one's first sight of a volcano in eruption, no reading or description prepares one for the actual phenomena. Mr Beebo is equally interesting and instructive when telling of the army ants somewhere in the jungle. Inded, he makes the tropical jungle yield an almost endless procession of new delights, each instinct with a moral for modern civilisation. "Jungle Peace," with its vivid word pictures and wealth of photographic illustrations, is a book which will' be treasured not alone for the information it conveys, but for the lessons which it teaches. In their turn Messrs Branford and Gcddes insist that the aim of "The Making of the Future" series is "to gather together existing elements of reconstructive doctrine and present them as a body of truth growing towards unity, and already fruitful in outlook and application." To this end three schools of thought have been drawn upon.

The first of these lays stress on family life, contacts with nature, the significance of labour, and the interests of locality—in a word, tha " regionialism "of France. A second school of thought is that which sees the progress of mankind as the unfolding of ideas and ideals, a school fostered by thinkers like Comte, William James, and Henri Bergson, The third school is the more modern one of Oivism which takes especial account of constructive betterment and child-welfare. The volume in this series which deals with "Our Social Inheritance" is divided into three parts, explained in the preface as follows: The first part treats mainly of our recent inheritance: that of the industrial revolution and its associated burden of evil. Here -the mode of treatment is in large measure critical. In Part II an endeavour is made to present Westminster as a type of historic culture city, in which the soc.'al inheritance survives in buildings, monuments, vistas, street scenes, whose story may be read as in a living museum of civilisation. Here the treatment is mainly descriptive and ,interfretative. It is more constructive in Part 11, for there we offer suggestions for the amnler and finer use by the universities of their privileges and traditions as trustees of the social inheritance. The contention is that as' the universities awaken to their resources and opportunities they will increasingly co-operate, with their cities and regions in order to equip the youth of each generation more fully and nobly, not only for the struggle, but also for the culture of life;, and this at all levels, ranging from home and neighbourhood, city and country, up to the world . and its envelope of human life. The approaching • jubilee of the Otago University is certain to bring more prominently before the public mind this view of the function of the university in the life of the people. To this end "Our Social Inheritance" merits careful study, especially in the light of its closing paragraph: On all sides people are anxiously asking: Watchman, what of the night? And, though it may be that many hours of darkness must yet pass, youth at least will not weaken in its unfailing expectation to hear that the morning comcth. And for all the keeping of the vigil may be a means of possessing one's soul. The universities may aid this vigil by connecting and supplementing their habit of the backward look by the forward vision. That they may ever hasten the coming of the dawn by preparing the translation of dream into deed is the thesis of this section of our volume.