THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH. THURSDAY, MAY
30, 1935,
LOOKING AT LIFE IN 1960
OLIVE BRANCHES OR POISON GASES?
By AN OLD STAGER
In The Edinburgh Evening Dispatch
King George the Fifth's Silver Jubilee has quité naturally been an occasion for looking backwards. Men's memories have recalled, in the silent flickies of the mind's eye, the pageant of outstanding events dur- ing the quarter of a century of His Majesty's eventful and fateful reign. How if, by way of corrective to this retrospective mood, we try to look forward a quarter of a century from now, and to peer into the still inecruitable future?
What will life be like, not only in this country 'but on this planet, in the year 1960? It is a fascinating con- jecture, though even the wisest and most far-seeing of us can only vaguely guess. No man can foretell the future with real certainty. We can but dimly gaze beyond the veil that shuts us off from the time to come. No doubt this is one of the wise dispensations of pro- vidence. If human life ceased to be the blind gamble it is, there might be many who would lack the courage to carry on with it.
The first thought that strikes one, in speculating as to what history may have recorded with its re- morseless finger on the wall of fate in another 25 years, is that mist of the outstanding world personolities of to-day will almost certainly have played their little part and left the stage of life.
What sort of successors will the tion. which may be settled one world behold to the existing way or the other before the bells Stalina, Hitlers, Mussolinis, and ring in 1960, is whether our fer- Roosevelts of our epoch? To-day vent peace aspirations of 10-day the world is almost crowded with will be realised or completely modern political Atlases, boaring frustrated and falsified. Will the on their atout shoulders the weight of national affairs. Before the Silver Jubilee babies of this year are 25 years old, others will have to be grappling with the urgent problems of weltpolitik..
next 25 years bring forth olive branches or poison gases? Win our children acclaim the assured pacifle sovereignty of Geneva, with perhaps
Federated United States of Europe, or will they have Will 1960 Ace dictatorship become a generation of drilled enthroned or democracy revivifled, troglodytes, scurrying below ferro. At this ment we perceive, į čonerele · gas-proof cellars when
In Russia and ... America, two the wireless sends far and wide huge conflicting, ex,,2riments in its warning of the aerial wrath politico-economies under. way, that is coming?
Will the wise men prove once Both prospects are within the
more to have come from the Enst,
bounde of human probability, or will the newer Western world have vindicated its organising The fate of humanity never look- suplency?
ct to be more hazardously on the Maybe the next quarter of a laps of the gods, assisted perhaps
few mortal dictators. century will witnega thu sub-by mergence of our cherished de-
DRILLED TROGLODYTES
ment now.
twenty-five years even
On the serodrome at Trebbin, near Berlin, a demonstration of gliders was arranged recently with great at- tandance. The picture shows a race of different types of gliders.
The opening of the sailing season brings out a smart crew on this yacht. Who said women don't work?
hour conversation an
hair
the time 1960 comex round, we enterprise as water or gas is now. safe, wnger that in 1960 there will When we turn to the future of shit look in on as well as talk Our rooms will, I fear; bo de- be grave and reverend seniors eyebrows mocratic theories, and a fight for world transport we are possibly to our friends when we ring them corated with flowers of exotic and who raise scandalised
up on the phone, Even far dis-untiatural colouring and even de-at the outrageous deportment of survival and supremacy between on surer ground.
Already experts who are far tant relatives may share this new sign. Pink violets of treble their contemporary bright young Red Communism and Black-Shirted
A Ron in variety and velvet-black roses as people, and bright young people Fascism. Or will some new com- from being crazy visionaries are acientifle benefaction.
of talking
conquering the New Zealand will perhaps be able large as sun-shades, may have who fondly imagine they pellor of human destiny arise, who
mistakenkicking over the Neo-Georgian will contrive to combine the best stratosphere. High altitude flight to see his parents in the Old been evolved by the
of scientific nur-traces in grand style. elements of both system? He at speeds of at least 500 and per- Country whilst he listens to their enthusiasm
on the wireless series. Probably a Rip Van would be a very daring prophet haps even 1,000 miles
The world will still, in the who ventured to dogmatise
seem fairly within our achieve phone. In this way emigration. Winkle of the 1935 vintage would on
which seems the sanest solution find the, 1960 dinner table replete metaphorical sense, be going to such a problem as this.
If flying develop in the next of our industrial problems, may be with all kinds of vegetables and the dogs. The only difference Yot another very haggard ques-rapidly as during the last
as robbed of half its sentimental fruits ag strange to him as may be that it will perhaps be we drawbacks.
bananas and tomatoes would have going quicker,.at all events in the belief of the pessimists of that ahall be crossing the Atlantie in. Shall we not also, in 1960, have been to our Tudor ancestors. five or six hours comfortably, and at last our National Theatre, but Clothes will have undergone a date.
If there is anything in the Australia itself may be no more perhaps not one with seats in it; sea change, too, though I wager] than a two-days' journey from only mechanism for transmitting at a venture they will still, at least theory that history repeats itself, London. But even yet nobody can the words and movements of the in the case of the 1960 grand 1960 will look back on 1935 as a predict with certainty whether State actors to our home, tele- dame, be not only very expensive period of stodgy unadventurouA the airship or the aeroplane, or talkie screens. I suspect the 1960 but exceedingly mutable. It is mediocrity in the art of living.
But I am going nap on one pro maybe aerial trains of gliders population will, except for outdoor within the bounds of possibility, towed by swift, high-powered fly sport and open-air exercise, be a though, thất even men may by phecy. I feel quite certain in my ing engines, will be the 1960 home-keeping one,
own mind that the 1960 generation developed even though that time have reality.
the domestic menago is largely colourative sartorial sense. Mauve will still be suffering infermittent- We may be tolerably sure, how-communised. No need to crowd trousers and magenta coats with ly from common or garden colds. ever, that before 1960
have an uneasy feeling, too, that We and into stuffy cinemas when you can funcy shirts perhapa! other nations shall have
in 1960 men may be going about found switch on from the hearthside.
HUMAN NATURE
waving banners, breaking hat |ways and means to remove the ELECTRICALLY, HEATED LOGS
Incidentally, existing reproach of Western)
In a world of that
more hustling shop windows, and shouting for course,
ever before in sex equality. But they will not civilisation's road holocaust. Our domestie hearthside may be com-evolution than
the get it. The 1960 women, securely descendants will regard with pletely metamorphosed by 1960, mankind's history, however, horror and amazement an epoch It is incredible that we shall stili que practically unchanging fae-in the saddle, will tell thom in- when travel was as deadly as be polluting our atmosphere with tor is human nature.
wasteful coal gases. Perhaps we Even more wonderful changes shall burn realistically imitated are likely to ensue from the per- Yule logs, electrically heated, all fection of wireless and the deve the year round when 扯 fire is lopment of television. It may not needed. Or central heating may by be too risky to predict that, by then have become as municipal an
war.
of
So it is oldulgently not to cry for the moon.
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Her beauty and fame havO failed to save glamorous Brigitte Helm (above), Cerman film star, from prison. The German Supreme Court, to which an -appeal was taken, has ruled that
she must serve a two-month sun- tence as the driver of an auto- moblie which struck and injured a woman pedestrinu.
Irving Berlin, at the piano, watches Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in a new dance step.
Designs from the imagination of futurist? No. Locomotives streamlined. The bullet nosed front of the new British streamlined
·locomotive at Swindon, England. The unique alimpo of the engine. tends to lesson wind resistance and give more speed, the abject of the engineers. The locomotivo, called the "King Henry VII," has been built in the utmost secrecy, this picture having been taken on ite first trial run.
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