The old type of propulsion could not have been very silent, unsprung' ramshackle carts clattering along wooden streets.
Again, the gases from a car are a very small quantity, almost impossible to be smelt unless standing close to the exhaust. What are they, to the ghastly odour of decaying fruit, filth, etc., that used to pervade every street?
Germs thriving everywhere, causing bubonic plague, as in the seventeenth century, sickness and ill-health of every description.
There always have and always will be money troubles. Certainly there is at present a crisis, more widespread than before, but what is it chiefly caused by?-the Great War, which in itself was a relapse from civilization.
Also, in Great Britain, the most civilized country, things are in a better condition than elsewhere, whereas in China, one of the least civilized, thousands die from lack of food and clothing.
Nowadays the various nations are much more friendly, the people learn one another's language and tour one another's country. How different from the time when the Tartars, etc., used to roam over Europe, pillaging villages, or later, when the Saxons and Danes fought England. All the petty feudal lords that every now and again would tour the country around, and kidnap some poor villager, amusing themselves by pouring molten lead over him, or some similar thing. The doting old women, who were labelled witches and ostracized by everybody.
The happiness of a country really depends on individual happiness.
Individual happiness is greatly helped by the comfort of to-day, the sanitary and hygienic way in which houses are built, food kept in shops and at home, the many other small things that go to make the whole.
P. HIXTON.
THIS CIVILIZATION!
I notice one of your contributors has been most eloquent in defence of our present civilization, and in putting' the other side of the case. I want to point out that I am not necessarily affirming that any other age in the evolution of man is more satisfactory, although there is little doubt that individual happiness reached a very high standard during the Tudor period. My object is simply to tear away the drapings of self-satisfaction and soi-disant complacancy which surround your correspondent, and to hope that the future inhabitants of the earth will make of their civilization the delightful world they imagine. Before discussing the trifling arguments of our friend, let us just study the measure of the world's defects. On the earth there are roughly 2,000 million people; according to competent authorities, of these there are anything up to 100 million without employment. Is your correspondent proud of this? Can he justify the unfortunate fact that while there are suffering millions with barely enough to eat, wheat is being burnt in Canada, coffee in Brazil, food supplies are being cut down? That while our means of production have increased fifty-fold, our rate of consumption per head of the world population is less than in 1910. All over the world great debtor nations are on the verge of defaulting. International trade is paralysed. Our money systems are so mysterious that even the great nations working on the gold standard of exchange find their gold useless. With a world so disorganized, can your correspondent believe that individuals can be permanently happy ; for, remember that ultimately the strain of this chaos falls on them.
Individually our health and happiness is appalling. Five out of every eight recruits for the Army were refused as being medically unfit. The average length of life is being shortened every year. Millions of our fellow-citizens look forward to nothing but years of toil in factory or workshop, at work of a routine character, with no prospects but comparative destitution at the end. The general level of intelligence is amazing. There is an excessive demand for cheap and vulgar books,, plays and films, and effeminate crooning jazz singers. Culture is sneered at, learning despised. But to your correspondent these world-shaking symptoms are nothing. He glorifies in the friendship of nations without seeing the merciless interneciene economic warfare; the health of people, without realizing the fearful new mental diseases which result from noise, and which are increasing our lunatic population by leaps and bounds ; the new methods of transport, heedless of the concomitant loss of life through fatal accidents. Of course if your correspondent really believes that the shrieking of klaxons, the piercing veil of hooters, the incessant reverberations of engines, and the noise of brakes and gears can be compared to the dull-soothing roar of a waterfall, I have nothing further to say, except to express my regret that the lunatic population seems due for a further increase at a very near date.
ARTHUR SKEFFINGTON.