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Hong Kong, Saturday, Feb. 12, 1938.
VAGRANT PLANETS
ves,
bele, the mother of the gods. Plutarch, too, relates the fall of another in Thrace, about 470 B.C. But meteorites, of course, '- are not planets, for the latter have a diameter of several miles and are really no joke.
*
Despite their penchant for ar ranging heroic tours into and from the outer space, Mr. H. G. Wells and M. Jules Verne never thought of putting the trippers Admitting the notorious pro-aboard, so to speak, an asteroid digality of nature, it seems a lit-or minor planet. They could tle hard that a world already sub- have arrived at their destination Ject to earthquakes, the eccentri-so much more inexpensively and citles- of dictators, unofficial quickly by digging themselves wars, raids by Wall Street "wol- snugly into one of these conven- "and a hundred other diver lient masses, and any deep study sified evils should now be warn-of applied mechanics would have ed of its liability to collide at any been rendered unnecessary. Per- moment with a planet. Had the haps the Martians, if, unfortun vagrant planet recently obsery-ately, they had not been proved time ed by Dr. Reinmuth, of Leipzig, to be fictitious, would in and certain South African as-have hit on the plan. But this, tronomers been five-and-a-half naturally, is beside the point. hours later in its travels, the un-What matters is that we accept consumed portion would inevit- the situation, as it stands, quite ably have struck the earth with philosophically. Though nature
man calamitous takes no account of
and gaseous and highly consequences. Fortunately, there his tiny load of knowledge, man, is a hope for every woe, and we through countless centuries need not get flustered give evolutionary progress, has learn- way to dismal terror at the ed a thing or two. He has taught thought of such a collision. What himself, for instance, how to dis- we escaped on this occasion we regard the improbable and how might not, it is true, escape next to let the intangible future take Comets, stars, time, but "next time" may be far care of itself.
or
of
in the ageless future. A promin-planets, and wandering asteroids ent member of the British As-interest him in proportion to his tronomical Society has, at least intelligence, no doubt, but they proffered that grain of reassur-do not alarm him with their ance, for in his opinion a colli-wildest antics. His long experi- sion is a prospect rather than ence of volcanic eruptions and probability, notwithstanding earthquakes has convinced him his nonchalant qualification that that what cannot be helped should... "there is "àlways the possibility not be worried about. So, that one of these bodies will this day, we see thousands of the smoky strike the earth suddenly, and people dwelling in without warning." In the role of shadows of Vesuvius and Strom- Job's comforter, he said that in boll scarcely giving a thought the unlikely event of an impact to the thousands who perished by any considerable mass, the there in centuries gone by. It is entire globe would sustain a shock not courage that keeps them and disaster would be spread there; it is that kind of fatalism, over an area that he, for one, not unmixed with optimism, ~ua- would not venture to estimate.der which the human race hides : To illustrate the point it is neces-its forebodings, and its ignorance sary only to recall that the meteor of the Infinite.
a trifle by comparison with
the planet recently sighted French Without Fears
which hit Russia ten years ago
struck with a roar audible a
hundred miles away, buried it- It is doubtful whether the self to an unknown depth in Western Brothers have yet left the earth's crust, and destroyed any permanent mark on the by heat, fire, and gas, 1,000 English language, but it would square miles of forest. By good rather seem that they may have luck it fell in an uninhabited scored a temporary hit on the At tongue of la belle France.
area.
The subject opens an interest-any rate someone now claims to ing and not unpleasing field of have discovered the following: speculation. We can imagine, ticket on a ready-made man's for example, that the leaders of suit in the window of a Paris certain States would not rush outfitter:
into mourning if an outsized Tres chic, tres English, meteor blazed down in the vici- Tres snob presque cad
nity of Moscow. By the same If the Western Brothers have token it: would be surprising if not positively inspired the cul the Chinese wailed interminably minating tribute of "presque were Tokyo to be extinguished, cad" they should at least be in- and equally astonishing if the terested to hear about it. And Spanish rebels wrung their hands as an example of fearless (and were Madrid to vanish like a peb-even frantic) phrasemaking -it ble in a cauldron. Given the ap should rank pretty highly even propriate circumstances, there among those
courageous Gallic would be an overwhelming temp-performers whose borrowings tation on the part of hostile and and importions are the despair of unsympathetic communities to the more sedate Academie. Fran- argue in these cases that justice caise.