The Timaru Herald. THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 1934. WILL THIS CIVILISATION ENDURE?

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19783, 26 April 1934, Page 8

The Timaru Herald. THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 1934. WILL THIS CIVILISATION ENDURE?

“Will ours be the first civilisation not to suffer a decline and fall?” asks Edward Shanks in a critical examination of the root causes of the decay of civilisations that have gone into the dust. It lies, all recognised authorities agree, with this generation and perhaps with the next to answer that question. What then are the factors that make for endurance? The answer to this pertinent question was given in the Anzac Day speeches that' were delivered in New Zealand yesterday. Warningafter warning was spoken of the menace to the stability of the nations reposing in the new race for armaments; indeed special stress was laid on the fundamental principle that those who draw the sword will perish under its terrific thrusts. As a matter of fact within the heart of democracy reposes the germ of its very existence. Hence the future of civilisation is being determined by the quality of the human heart. But what justification is there for assuming that the present civilisation is less susceptible to decay than those that have disappeared? Delvers into history repeatedly point to the Roman Empire in making comparisons, simply because there is no fallen society equally extensive of which history tells us so much. It is true that the Roman civilisation did not embrace the whole world as ours does, but it did embrace a virtually self-sufficient organisation. Historians tell us that it cannot have fallen but from internal weakness, and less and less, as inquiries are prosecuted, does that weakness seem to have been merely the inefficiency of a highly cultivated population against overwhelming hordes of vigorous barbarians. The barbarians, we know, displaced no one, overthrew nothing. They merely slipped into places made empty by a previous depopulation ; they began to take control of places where the previous organisation had slipped down to their own level of barbarism. The more modern view of the Roman failure, which may be said to have begun with that great historian Justel de Coutanges, has had a great effect on speculation about our own future. It needs not, apparently the pressure of healthy barbarians on the frontier to overturn a civilisation. The Roman . Empire would have perished, even in complete isolation, not very much later than it actually did. By what line of reasoning can we show the Roman civilisation differing from the present day conditions;

Oswald Spengler would blame the stars or the nature of things, for the destruction of the Romans. Dr. Schweitzer and M. Massis would blame the influence of wrong ideas, and, indeed, M. Massis in his “Defense de l’Oceident,” believes that the naturally virile and advancing West is laying itself open, in a moment of disillusionment and fatigue, to the softening and disrupting influences of Eastern philosophy, and thus threatens to accomplish its own downfall. But in what virtues do we claim superiority? The Roman Empire was a great machine which began with a tremendous impetus, and then slowed down because the people whose industry made it «work, found that they were not getting tolerable results from it. Therefore they neglected their duties; therefore they did as little as possible. Whenever they could escape from the hereditary responsibilities imposed on them, they escaped. Whenever they could not, the possibility of effort seeped out of them. Roman scholars confess that this is at least a tentative view of the real reasons for the end of the Roman civilisation; and now when so many of the best informed of the observers of the march of world events are worrying about the menacing influences that are said to be threatening to end 1 existing civilisation, the causes of downfall of other civilisations are worth taking into consideration. Upon reflection, however, it will be agreed that this is not a pessimistic angle of Approach. It implies, however, that existing civilisation ought not to overlook the obvious and arresting lessons of history; indeed, a fuller realisation of the causes of the decay and disappearance of the Roman civilisation, should convince thoughtful men and women of to-day that they have only to arrange their individual and national affairs a little better to escape the fate of the Romans. The peoples of the world to-day, more than any race of men that went before, have delved more thoroughly iuto history and ought, more than any of the earlier civilisations, to profit by their experiences aud their fate. The almost universal verdict yesterday emphasised the elementary fact that the sharpness, the unexpectedness and the universality of the present-day crisis may prove to have been blessings in disguise. The leaders of all nations, no less than the thoughtful members of enlightened communities, have been striving, and are striving, as the Romans never did, to discover what is wrong and to evolve efficacious remedies that will lift modern civilisation to a plane upon which international probity and regard for the common*- rights of humanity will be enthroned and the safety of civilisation assured.