10
Radio A
THE
HONGKONG
TELEGRAPH. FRIDAY, AUGUST
20, 1937.
. Men and Things Abroad by W. N. Ewer.
Bridge To "SEE IT IN PERSPECTIVE
Another World
Du Dr. Nandor Four. Research Ofleer. International Institute for Psychical Research
THE
HE ultra-microscope has opened up vast ranges of life in the very amall. An ultra-radio may lead to the discovery of another world in- finitely large.
Cam not thinking of any of the plaarts. Marconi has been receiving mysterious wireless signals from the outer space for many years. From wireless operators one hears rumours of puzzling extra-terrestrial Interrup- tlons. Yet I doubt if we can touk forward to exciting discoveries in that direction.
The other world which I have m nind is not a world of matter. It is a world beyond our sense periep- tions. It is the world of the drac. If there is a world beyond this one I must be
of intense the scene human activity. It is almost im- possible to imagine that an should not be made work to reach us.
effort
tron such a
Instrumental communication is the only means which could bring home to the world of science the stupend- our reality of the existence of an- other world. Seers of past genern- tions frequently
11 predicted ultimate constructions of such an instrument. Conspicuous merits have been claimed in recent
childish contraptions and for some intricate machines. None of their stood the nel test.
years for
Edison seriously concerned himself" with the problem. Perhaps it is as the result of the world-wide pub- Heity given to Edison's attempts that wireless is sill being suspected, at least in germ, as the ideal bridge between this world and the next,
I would approach the problem this way:-If the dead exist there must be an exchange of thought ar per- haps also of speech amongst them. There must be a vibratory medium through which such an intercourse takes place. For specelt, this medium could not be the air. It is too gross for anything but the com- plicated vocal mechanism of body.
our
Is the vibratory medium the ether of space? Let us assume that it is; let us usstine further, that the spirit body of which St. Paul speaks us organs that can produce the needs- sary vibrations, is it impossible to imagine a detector thal could trans- form the disturbances in the other into waves of sound? Spirits, how- ever, may nut communicate by spoken word but by thought alone. Would thinking set up waves in the ether too?
Registering Thought Waves
There is a man in Italy who claims that he can register thought waves. He is Professor Ferdinand Cazza- nail, lecturer in psychiatry and neurology at the University of Rome.
I met him at the International Congress for Paychical Research in Oslo, and I saw his Blm records of the electro-magnetic radiallons which ure emitted by the brain during intense creative activity or in light trance.
In 1
normal frame of mind the brain does not emit these waves. Emotion, a great idea, Oinking of masterpiece, a psychle experience, or another kind of thrill will
produce
various patterns on the oscillograpli, which
Cazzamalli's ja
recording medium. Over subterranean waters or underground metal specific varin- tions occur which the brain of diviners interprets unfallingly. Ac- cording to Cuzzamalli, it is from the reception of similar electro-magnetic waves that the brain of mediums derives the knowledge which we call supernormal.
Wave
Cazzamalll's discoveries, however, do not lead us very for. I asked him what he makes of his charts. He shrugged his shoulders. He can record them, but it cannot read them. The chart la there but is a closed book. He cannot even be certain that the oscillations cor- respond to the actuni emotions or thoughts.
We must And another line of ap- proach. Certain mysterious pheno- mena seem to suggest that the brain is not only a wireless receiver, but also a complete television set. There is no better attested psychic pheno menon than apparitions of the dead or dying at the moment of death to those to whom bonds of affection tie them. How the brain percelves an apparition we do not know. Saying that it is by telepathy does not help much. By Intensely thinking of us, the dead or dying should transmit, by a telepathle process, our image and not theirs.
а
A Woman's Vision
It is much more likely that some- thing similar to the chemical pheno memon known
osmosls takes place: that the consciousness of the dying, "under the effect" of intense excitement or strain, expands and
2
in the
FILES"
NE of the worst, and yet one of the wisest, poems that Kipling ever wrote is
a plece called "The Files." It fa dread- ful doggerel.
But its theme is stark
wisdom. It is that before you get excited over men or events of the moment you should "see it in por- spective in the files "les being newspaper files.
**Where unvisited, n-cold
Lie the crowded úrars of old
In that Kensal Green of greatness called the files."
That Is good advice for all who write, and all who talk, and all who have to act, on and about politient happenings.
We all tend so much to live from day to lay, to forget the past, to ignore the causes of things, to get them out of perspective, to see them myopically, so that only the Immediate 1s clear, Le rest blurred and hazy to our vision.
It means, And that is dangerous.
and nasty almost inevitably, bad Judgment, based less on underland- than on the emotion of the montent.
There is no passion so much trans- ports the sincerity of judgment as des anger," says Montaigue, calmest of philosophers: but the more or less is a great matter; an passions mar the Judgment,
W
Look Back
E know that well enough In private affairs: un- <
arc Jess happily, we guarded in pubile malters, in which il is, oddly and dangerously, counted rather a good thing to base judgment -und take action-ul the dictate of anger or indignation or some other cniction.
And for that-Kipling is surely right --the best cure is to look back to the past, and see coolly and in perspective how atale and foolish seem now things which not so long ago seemed to the hot mood and the distorted Judgment of the moment all important.
Moreover, you cannot hope to under- aland any issue or any problem unicas you know something of its causes, of the past which has determined the present: ns Marx rightly insisted that
hope you
to cannot
understand economics without some knowledge of economie history.
New Kipling's advice is "dig among the lea" is good: but maybe too good, No busy man has line to dig and Slope among all those Ales of news- papera and despatches and speeches and diaries and documents which aro the day to day record of those hap- penings of the past which have mado the problems of the present.
That in the historian's Job. But we, who cannot dig, enn at. least use tho results of the digging." And if not
from the Ales, then at least from the hooks, we can recal) the past, and.use it to derstand the present.
Two Surveys
The Congress of Vienna framed 14 peace walch took two generations to straighten out. (Picture from a film.)
the records (memory, even for recent years, being to trustworthy guide) and try to get our perspective right, Here, on my deak, are two books very helpful in an attempt to see straight. Оле One la lim, the other bulky. sums up the history of the years since the Treaty of Versailles, the other surveys Britain's policy ever since the French Revolution,
One of them is easily and quickly rend, to read the other in a more for midable task: but a task well worth the doing.
Professior Carr's survey has the re- pellent title of "International Rela- tions since the Peace Treaties" (Mac- millan, Cs.).
Professor Seton Watson's in "Britain ini Europe-1789-1014." (Cambridge University Press, 303.)
Now from the signing of the Ver- sailles Treaty to the present day is A mere 18 yeaIH,
But it is an eighteen years which have been so crowded that it is easy to gel bewildered and lost in the throng of events.
It is a good service then that Pro- fessor Carr doen-to marahal the story of those eighteen years into 300 lucid pages.
Adjustments
NLY eighteen years. But
Of
I am sure that reader after reader will over and over again pause to say: "Yes, of course. I had forgotten about that. It does make a difference.",
The main thread, of course, is plain Almost every important enough. political event of an international character which has happened in the world since 1919 has been the direct or indirect product of this settlement."
I suspect that when we get a little
I TOOK
F we do not do that "IT sometimes, then, quite certainly and very perl- fously, we shall ace the present all askew and all out of perspective.
How many people, for example, who talk to-day about the Spanish war. have in mind, or can remember, what happened in Spain before last July- why Alfonso fell, or, for that matter, why he ever reigned: or what passed between his fight from Madrid and Lie revolt of the generals.
Yet without that "background" what is any opinion worth?
and
So if we want to think, or talk, or acl. sensibly, about things abroad." about 'international relations' the rest of it, it is quite essential that now and again we turn back among
interpenetrates a kindred conscious- ness, thus producing instantaneous awareness. Here is an instance from my own family blstory:-
One night when I went to bed dog- tired my wife wake me up. She wis almost hysterical.
"A dreadful thing has happened," she said. "As 1 was falling asleep 1 saw Uncle Willie foaming at the mouth and shouting. 'I will show you that I can kill myself,'"
I tried to calm my wife, saying that she must have been dreaming. A few days later I went on business to Budapest, where Uncle Willie lived. My sister-in-law told me:--
"We had an anxious letter from your wife, and we answered her that everything was O.K. But the fact is at Uncle Willle, who for some time was going from bad to worse, and had tried to kill himself; has finally succeeded. He saved up his sleeping powder, and took it all in one dose.'
I Inquired about the date of the tragedy. It was the very night of my wife's vision,
If consciousness can expand in this mysterious manner, it may not be the product of the brain. It may be only associated with It, and, per haps, it could exist without it. In fact, it iB impossible to picture Burvival of bodily death without postulating this apartness.
Will endio ever help us to under- stand the mystery of our own self? Will it over bridge this world and the next? At our present rate of! progress in knowledge the next ten years may bring an answer to these exciting questions.
is a chance," said the manag- ing director, "of a lifetime, my boy. Of course, it means Durban for you, years of hard work, giving up your old friends--but at the end of it....."
At the end of it managership of
farther away and our perspective is better still we shall see these years as a period of inevitable adjustment. A settlement" like that of 1910 could not possibly bo rigidly per inanent. Even had no passions entered iuto
decisions,
political our engineering
anot equal to such a task. Adjustments had to come: partly because of bad designing partly be cause of changing circumstances.
Looking back the statesmanship of these years (and these) is going to be gauged by its success or failure in making the adjustments of that structure without any major collapse. It all begins to look so obvious now. But the astonishing and tragic thing la that the treaty-makers did genuinely believe that they bad produced a permanent settlement, and that t could
sigidly be permanently and maintained by the application of force.
Parallels
HEY had failed to go and dig among the files. More than once that flood has run so-in the files."
It was so after the Napoleonic Wars. The Congress of Vienna thought it had settled Europe for a century.
In fact, Europe spent two genera tlons in revising and adjusting that aetlicment, mostly by the worst of all possibio means.
TILO
More than two generations. last instalment of revision of Vienna came in 1000-peaceably enough- when Norway was released from the unlon with Sweden, forced on it na a personal reward to Marshal Bernadotte for betraying Napoleon and as & punishment to the Danish King for Bupporting himi
That is one reason why, having rend Professor Carr, you should turn back to read Professor Ecton Watson.
It is chastening and stimulating to thought to see how more than onco that flood has ren so,"
"Meanwhile, the quarrel between the
Spanish clericals and progressives→ 'Exallados' mut Serviles with their significant nicknames-grew dally more acute... The British Govern ment leant nightly towards the con- allutional party, but held aloof from
.. Ita im- all ideas of intervention mediate policy was to allow the Spanish Revolution to run its course and to use all its influence in order that the other Powers should do likewise."
That is 18221
Of course, such coincidence in detail is just coincidence. But there is a more general and n more useful parallel be- tween past and present.
sama
n
In a world of independent Stater. some big, some small, some strong.
Wenk: in
World whose geography is a permanent factor, but where relativo strengths are always changing as a consequence of political or economic change, the problems of International politics retain a starting similarity: and so the past is full of lessons for the present, If the present will only learn,
It may be that we are passing out of that age of repented disturbances, adjustments and readjustments of the Balance of Power" into a new age of collectivism.
The big task of to-day is to effect That salutary change.
"Power-Politics "
B
UT we cun.sce now that the change has not by
any means come about: that in fact" power-politics" have been the reality all along: that for more is needed to bring about the transition than the signature of a Covenant; that there are dangerous problems that must be solved before transition and during transition.
All that has to be apprehended it Tho to avold catastrophe. past is still with us. And we have to learn from It If we are to cope muccess- fully with the present.
Bo-to the files: or to the work of the men who have ransacked them for 1
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and no real wretchedness, bat will
BUT WAS you marry me?"
RIGHT?
a South African branch, £2,000 A Question of Marriage year. Travel Blue skies of Atrlea, Certainty. The teasing. fretting problem of what to do about a We career solved in a twinkling.
as
"Yes," she said. "I think it would
be the wisest thing either of us could possibly do."
Was I right?
Happy-Out Conscience!
It is fairly early days, but I am
I married my very best friend. beginning to think so.
other each had
We like the good things of life, but known
ure neither of 125 wildly children, grown up together. There we
When I married I was had
never been a time when she was ambitious.
Il meant
At the start of if the fear of leaving not there. The idea of her not being on the way to fair success. the girl I never eventually married, somewhere in my life was unthink- London, diplomatic entertaining and
me bad seen
through being entertained, ceaseless busyness. the girl to whom I never said a word able. She about the job I turned down for her, most of my troubles and I had done push, contacts, and all the rest of
no it. We did not like London. the girl for the sake of having the the same for her. There was
We left it. We look at thatched love story, no romance immediate to-morrow's dances and passionate cinemas with whom I thought $2,000 in the understood sense of the world, cottage in the country. I exchanged there were no heart searchings and moderate success with a garden and
fo a year well lost.
green gale for almost certain a gr heart burnings. We seemed to start
success in
centrally heated Somebody else got that job, same-
certainty and quiet
in
body else is half-way to the £2,000 Where most marriages aim to get seventh storey London Bat. I am
scen
contentment.
a year which might have been mine. She said, "You see, you're the only happy, but conscience oflen accuses Somebody else, for all I know, has person I understand, the only per- this is a laziness, you can do bet- married that girl. I haven't her for five years. She couldn't face son who's really real to me, yet the ter, you should make the effort and
When
other men are going big in the uncertainty of marrying a man idea of, say, writing passionate love do better; you should try to go bi
the cities. I potter in my garden. with a terary career which she, in letters to you is quite ludicrous." cidentally, urged him to take up.
be I needn't. Maybe I shouldn't. I said, "I don't suppose it'll
I lost the big steady job. I lost wildly exciting, there won't be many I chose to. the girl lost it for. I gained from thrilling discoveries, not many ups
the whole business an occupation and not many downs, no raptures which, if it brings in a mere fraction
of that £2,000 a year, I thoroughly
enjoy,
Was I right?
A Mother's Claims
not yet
Was I right?
But
Charles Gordon.
Your Health: General Debility
1 loved her, the words seemed to stand. suffocate me. "AL least," she would Bay, "I've got
you
en
WE
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then
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My father died. My mother and WE can define many diseases with expend her store of love and sym- unhappy. accuracy; we can say this man pathy on the sick and the 1 were left alone in the big house. "You'll look," my father's eyes said is suffering from consumption, that You know what I mean-"Break-
one from diabetes, and so on; but fast in bed, dear,"
#couple of to me as he lay dying, "alter your often we have to deal with patients poached eggs on tonst, and
A little later in the mother, my boy, won't you?"
who have no definite disease, and anoth snooze.
then My mother was young,
A light of another snooze, fifty. She was in good health. She we label them "general debility."
The truth is that every part of had friends, ony number of them: She adored me, her only child. For their body is suffering from over- a few ripe strawberries sent in by heard who had kind eyes a
neighbour nearly a year we faced each other in strain. Brain, nerves, back, thal house. "We're happy together, and Internal organs have all stood there was an invalid in the house. they can (And very proud she is, too, of her Aren't we?" she would say. Though Just about as
strawberry patch in the back gar- den.) In cases of general debility, pos After lunch naturally comes your
nap, from which At the end of the year I said one sible mental as well as physical afternoon
causes must be looked for. Finan awake to find tea ready and a lotter morning, staring out of the window, clal worry is very often at the back from home making how you are get- I've decided to take a fiat of my cure is a handsome prize in a sweep-Under this sort of treatment the like own-you mustn't be hurt; you must cur understand, I owe it to myself and to stake or a cheque from a sympathelle noor fred nerves brisk up
friend or relativel
flowers put in water, and a few The methods generally used to days of nuntle's kindness are enough
nre to general debillly combat
make a new man of you. This is leave mo? I mean, why?"
foremost is known as the "rest cure," and a She cried. She was sentimental, numerous. First and
for n goori very good cure it is for those whose bitter, angry, and sensible in turn. the recommendation
are frayed by the harry- It was one of the hardest, most ruth hellday-not a mad, wild rush to the nerves
did to take that Continent, but a real rest; there is scurry of everyday life in this less things I ever
always a kind aunt somewhere who civilised world of ours.
M D flat. But I took 11.
never gets married, and loves to Was I rightr
not daring to meet her eyes, "Mother, of the troubic, and the only real. on,
Ling
the pair of, us, 100 sald, "want to
you can't."
you
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