"Gone the cry of 'Forward, Forward,' lost within a growing gloom;
Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb.
Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space,
Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage, into commonest commonplace!
Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.
Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?"
Am I unduly pessimistic? I fear that this is the case with most men who, like Dante, have crossed their fiftieth year and find themselves in a "dark and sombre wood."
My reader will probably subject me to the additional reproach that I suggest no remedy.
There are many palliatives for the evils which I have discussed. To rekindle in men the love of work for work's sake and the spirit of discipline, which the lost sense of human solidarity once inspired, would do much to solve the problem, for work is the greatest moral force in the world. But I must frankly add that I have neither the time nor the qualifications to discuss the solution of this grave problem.
If we of this generation can only recognize that the evil exists, then the situation is not past remedy; for man has never yet found himself in a blind alley of negation. He is still "master of his soul and captain of his fate," and, to me, the most encouraging sign of the times is the persistent evidence of contemporary literature that thoughtful men now recognize that much of our boasted progress was as unreal as a rainbow. While the temper of the times seems for the moment pessimistic, it merely marks the recognition of man of an abyss whose existence he barely suspected but over which his indomitable courage will yet carry him.
I have faith in the inextinguishable spark of the Divine, which is in the human soul and which our complex mechanical civilization has not extinguished. Of this, the world war was in itself a proof. All the horrible resources of mechanics and chemistry were utilized to coerce the human soul, and all proved ineffectual. Never did men rise to greater heights of self-sacrifice or show a greater fidelity "even unto death." Millions went to their graves, as to their beds, for an ideal; and when that is possible, this Pandora's box of modern civilization, which contained all imaginable evils, as well as benefits, also leaves hope behind.
I am reminded of a remark that the great Roumanian statesman, Taku Jonescu, made during the Peace Conference at Paris. When asked his views as to the future of civilization, he replied: "Judged by the light of reason there is but little hope, but I have faith in man's inextinguishable impulse to live."