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Number 8. self-sufficiency. The very sound of it flatters our vanity and testifies to the good opinion we We boast of civilization as if we were really civilized just as we talk of “ (:hristianity” as if we were really Christians. Yet it is all the veriest game of make-believe, have of ourselves. for we are mere savages still: savages in the lust of the eye and pride of life-savages in our national prejudices and animosities, our jealousies, our greed and malice and savages in our relentless efforts to overreach or pull down cach other in social and business relations.'- (Nash's Magazine.) Modern Civilization-modern civilization and western civilization are practically convertible expressions-is based upon what is termed Natural Science. The inventions and discoverics of the last two centuries are at once the wonder and glory of the present age. They are proudly pointel out as unparalleled in any other period in the history of the world. Sir E. Ray Lankester thus sums up the effect of these inventions and discoveries upon modern civilization :- “And it is to this world of knowledge built up and applied to the industries ad well-bcing of human communities that we owe our modern civilization, our steam engines, railways, ocean ships, our chemical manufactures, our electric telegraphs, lighting and power transmission, our healthier food and habitations, our fuller and safer lives.” (The Rationalist Press Association Annual for 1915, p ll) Steam and electricity by annihilating distance have made it possible for the Western nations to acquire vast empires and to hold them. It has been claimed by more than one authority that the discoveries of mọlerin science have made modern civilization stable and pirmanent unlike the ancient civilizations of Babylon and Carthage, of lome and Greece. But, on the other hand, the discoverics of modern science-aeroplanes, Zappelins, lyddite shells, long range gunshave also made possible the present world-wide 99) AT THE CROSSING. 393 were rer ter ܫ ܒ -- The last three years have amply proved that it is those very discoveries of modern science that have made the conflict assume such dimensions the ultimate effect of which one cannot even guess. General Smuts, the South African soldier and statesman speaking the other day at a meeting of the League of Nations Society, said :- “Civilization itself was almost crumbling to pieces and if some means were not found to prevent war in future the whole fabric of civilization was in danger.' Another writer from London says in the Englishman :- "Looked at coldly and dispassionately the news from all the nations that are participants in the war show that a gradual process of disintegration is going on.' It would not be wide of the mark to say that it is modern civilization alone based as it is upon the scientific discoveries of the age, which has made the present war possible. General Sir William Robertson (Chief of the General Staff) speaking at the Newspaper Press Fund Dinner on the 12th May last, is reported to have said: “No war had so differed from its predecessors as the present one. Aeroplanes had entirely changed the character of operations. The enormous masses of artillery rendered the preparation for battle a long process, requiring an elaborate system of transport. We had expended in five or six weeks 2,00,000 tons of ammunition in France alone, and had conveyed thither 50,000 tons a week.' Again Mr. Percival Phillips, in a description of the fighting at Bullecourt, says: "It was scientific warfare of the type the Germans introduced in 1915, flame machines and gas shells being used freely.' It is these scientific discoveries alone which have made possible the present carnage unparallaled in point of immensity in the history of the worldancient or modern-the actual extent of which can be gathered from the following extract from the same speech of Sir William Robertson referred to above:- 'The greatest peculiarity cataclysmal stife.