The End of an Age

.-. ... I~~. I II ~".;~:~.. ~ .:·;. I -· .. , ": ., · ,_ ; ~ , - ~ :• I • . \ • ., i t.~~.' t..:: . j~ l,' . , rt": • 11 \ ' I~ f, ' ..··' I r. ;1 I l - '·-' \ " I 1:; I-., •., I I I' I I I .. ... ,, THE . END OF AN AGEw . H. ALEXANDER·sucH phrases as ''the end of an age'' can be dangerous. They_ play, for· instan·ce, into the hands of the compilers of college catalogues who can snip history more neacly into arbitrar~ segments than any modern precision , m·achine can reduce an original solid to diaphanous slices. There can no more be the ef?.d of an age than there can be an abrupt stoppage and resumption _ of the processes of life in the individual after childhood, youth, middle age, and the date of retirement. Historical fact is a continuum; as a rule it is only when we turn to look back that we begin to see lines.floating before our eyes and presently ideO:tify these our own ophthalmic disturbances with actualities ·of historical divisions. Rome may have "fallen"·in 476-An..but not many people heard the crash; the business of getting. _something to eat) a place to sleep, and the sustenance for a family never · c~ased for a single hour for most people, whatever it was that happened to· :'the child wit)l the ironically conceived name of Romulus Augustulus. \Vhat . did happen was·that an administrative ~ystem ceased to be at Rome. Yet, once we have gu~rded ourselves against the folly of seeking by the aid.of "leading" dates mathematically to segment.ize hist~ry, we can make 'ourselves free to _admit that ages do reach a point after which t:hey con~tantly tend to approach zero in the sense that contribution to the current of human affairs seems to be ever less and less noticeable. But the amount and the degree of the fading ·are things hard to determine; so-called dead pasts have an alarming vitality at times. "Propositions which would . ~not commapd intellectual· assent,, says Sir Richard Livingstone in The Greek Genius and its Meaning to Us, "are still supported by sentiment and • habit.. Dead beliefs, like dead men, never die, but by a law of heredity· haunt the blood of late:..descended generations.n That is why we .must ,exercise some restraint in talking of the end of an age; we must recall that we are nof dealing with any determinable absolute. Further, there is a, . su·ggestion of self-pity about using the phrase ''end of an age," uttered in a "Why-did-this-have-to-happen-to-me?" voice. But just as many persons clear 'down to 'the Pasadena pastor of last·September love to announce the impending end of the ':Vorld, which, despite all of them from St. ,Peter down, goes most ruggedly and unconcernedly on " its way with a sniff at ~nybody who accords it less than the five hundred million years of the geologist, so there are always those who like to procl~im .from- the housetops the "end of the age." This has recently been illustrated , by the number of articles, large or small; inspired or palpably pedestrian, which have announced that the falling·of the atomic bomb on ·Hiroshima marks .the end of an age. ·Yet, six weeks awayfrom that event, at the date of the writing of this article, ·an event which, for all of Wins,ton Churchill's pqntifical blessing upon it, is the singJe most bn~tal·action of all time, seeing 107 . ' !:. ~- ; • . l _ _ ;.,. ' \ . ~ • ':' t / I ~ ~ 11..:,•.•.~::: ~~ ,. j,.-1 }.1 I ;, •.· :.r ,·• ,.11 [-,). !>:'·I' iJ' .. ,·:. ' t' .., 1 ... . ' ,..· ·. 1'. ' l, •.t 1: ··', .· f:~- !··).-. • 1 •• · :.·. t i, ' - on pages 45; 46, and 48 an article entitled "The Atomic Scientists Speak up," written by three of the principal figures in the "Manhattan" project. On. page 45 occurs this quaint sentence: "Scientists·have not heretofore felt that it was their responsibility to tight for the rational use .of the products of their endeavor." Why so this time? "Never before have they been _ so clearly responsible for the new forces of destruction unleashed upon the world." This impli~s a ' moral outlook _ on a par with that of the small boy who...