Perhaps they will confuse
him with Jenghiz Khan or Alexander the Macedonian. The
great war which has just come to an end will appear in the light
of that long commercial conflict which settled the supremacy
of the Mediterranean when Rome and Carthage fought during
one hundred and twenty-eight years for the mastery of the sea.
The Balkan troubles of the 19th century (the struggle for
freedom of Serbia and Greece and Bulgaria and Montenegro)
to them will seem a continuation of the disordered conditions
caused by the Great Migrations. They will look at pictures
of the Rheims cathedral which only yesterday was destroyed
by German guns as we look upon a photograph of the Acropolis
ruined two hundred and fifty years ago during a war
between the Turks and the Venetians. They will regard the
fear of death, which is still common among many people, as a
childish superstition which was perhaps natural in a race of
men who had burned witches as late as the year 1692. Even
our hospitals and our laboratories and our operating rooms
of which we are so proud will look like slightly improved
workshops of alchemists and mediaeval surgeons.
And the reason for all this is simple. We modern men and
women are not ``modern'' at all. On the contrary we still
belong to the last generations of the cave-dwellers. The foundation
for a new era was laid but yesterday.
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