The Progress of the World
Anon
Genre: | Regular Feature, Editorial, News-Commentary |
Subjects: | Meteorology, Disease, Class, War, Progress, Conservatism, Scientism |
Comments on 'a spell of winter weather severe and protracted beyond all precedent in the lifetime of this generation', and notes that when, at last, 'the frost began to give, the influenza descended upon us, as its fashion is, striking down high and low, rich and poor, with a preference, indeed, for the well-to-do', and constituting a 'detestable substitute for the malarial fevers of hotter lands' (211). Reports the latest victories of the Japanese army over the Chinese, and observes that 'there is no doubt that in the outer world it will tend to re-enforce the popular feeling in favour of modern scientific improvements and drastic reform. It was not by remaining in the ancient ways and by reverently nursing every mouldy fragment of medievalism that time had spared that the Japs were able to grasp the thunderbolts with which they have hurled China from her ancient throne in Manchuria and Korea. The Japs have won because they were progressive with a vengeance, and, having once grasped the new ideas, carried them out to their ultimate logical conclusions' (220). |
© Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Project, Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, 2005 - 2020
Printed from Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: An Electronic Index, v. 4.0, The Digital Humanities Institute <http://www.sciper.org> [accessed ]