Anno Domini 2071 — Part 6

I listened as attentively as I dared and could, and I observed very soon that the so-called travelling dialect was a mixture of various tongues, English though preponderating; and this I ascribed to the fact of the majority of the travelling public being generally Englishmen.

No more War!

As I looked about me, it so happened that my eye fell upon some wide tubes peeping out from the sides and the hold of the vessel.

I first thought that these were a new kind of cannon; so I asked whether we were on board of a man-of-war?

Miss Phantasia smiled, but her smile was a bitter one immediately followed by a sigh.

"War!"

she echoed, "those chivalrous times we only know from history; our modern men are manufacturers, merchants, engineers, scholars, legislators, and so forth; but as for soldiers--well, you may see them on the stage occasionally, but our numerous force of constables is the only approach to soldiery we have."

"Is it possible?"

cried I; "no more war, and no more standing armies!

At last then the idea has triumphed of the peace-men, Cobden, Bright, and their followers; at last the present generation has acknowledged that war was an eternal disgrace to humanity, reducing reasoning men to the level of the unreasoning brute, and causing them to destroy each other's lives in the blindest fury, instead, alas!

of dwelling together on this beautiful earth in unity, peace, and concord, for the promotion of mutual happiness!"

"I doubt very much indeed," muttered Bacon in his teeth, "whether any such considerations as those have brought about the reign of peace.

Mankind, my dear sir, is still swayed by passion; quite as much, I venture to say, as in bygone days.

Men still deserve the epithet once served upon them by a foreign poet: 'angel half, half brute!'

and so it will be in the future, although it can never be denied that society, as a whole, progresses in a moral sense.

But for this, that 'circumstances alter cases,' I am afraid there would be war still.

Only circumstances are altered, and war has become an impossibility.

"In the first place, our present condition of peace has been chiefly brought about by the universal state-bankruptcy at the close of the nineteenth century, when the combined debts of the would-be civilised nations (in consequence of the immense expense involved in the large standing armies) had become to surpass the joint national capitals.

"In the second place, the present state of affairs is due to the marvellous improvements lately made in the weapons of attack and defence.

"When, in the last war, now about a century ago, the navies of England, France, Russia, and America had mutually destroyed one another; when, through a bombardment from both sides of the channel, the capitals of England and France had simultaneously been set on fire; when the losses on both sides had become incalculable, not to say irreparable, then, but not until then, people began to ask themselves whether even a victory was worth such enormous sacrifices.

And it finally dawned in the public mind that in all wars the conqueror is likewise the loser.

"But that which has mainly contributed to render war gradually a matter of rare occurrence, and which, we trust, will ultimately lead to its complete abolition, is the vastly increased intercourse between the peoples of various nationalities, by which all those silly inherited national antipathies have slowly become absorbed;

then again, we have had the application of the principles of free trade, the removal of all those barriers that separated nations from nations, an universal system of coinage and weights and measures, an increase in the means of locomotion and communication, and the fusion of the individual interests of particular nations into one great universal 'public weal.'

Nations have ceased to stand opposite, against one another, they flourish side by side; by thousands and thousands of bonds they are joined and held together; and if the nineteenth century has witnessed the introduction of the principle of nationality, ours has made another step in the right direction, and produced the recognition of the principle of humanism."

[11] Free Trade; Universal Locomotion.

I was much impressed with the justness of the last words of my companion.

It now became clear to me how every new railroad, every new telegraph line, the removal of every obstacle in the process of exportation and importation, does not only directly promote the general interest and welfare, but that they are as many links in the great chain by which men are united together in brotherhood as members of one and the same household.

And yet methought I perceived a threatening cloud at this bright horizon.

"If then," said I, "all wars have ceased to be, and if in consequence thereof, as well as through other propitious circumstances of various kinds, commerce and industry have been constantly progressing, surely you must have witnessed an alarming increase of population; and the production of the necessary food can hardly have kept pace with its consumption."

"If you suppose that we have now, as formerly, many indigent people and others occasionally starving in some of the over-peopled districts, then, of course, you are right; but I do not grant that, on the whole, pauperism has been on the increase; I am rather inclined to believe the contrary, although during the last two hundred years the population of Europe has almost doubled itself.

Two things you should not lose sight of; in the first place, the increase in the means of transport having brought about a more equal distribution of food; and secondly, of nothing now-a-days being wasted, but, on the contrary, everything finding its way to where necessity exists.

In consequence of a now universal free trade, every country produces exactly that which thrives best in its own soil and climate.

Then, again, numberless acres of waste land have long been, and are still being, cultivated; whilst progressive science has rendered imperishable services to the practical agriculturist by pointing out to him various new modes and processes whereby to increase the crops and fruits of his fields.

Thus, for example, we know now everything connected with the quality and quantity of all matters used in the cultivation of vegetables; moreover, every agriculturist has become, in our days, a manufacturer.

To him the plants are the tools through means of which the so-called inorganic matter imbedded in the soil and atmosphere is to be worked and shaped into organic matter, i. e. , into matter fit for consumption; and therefore, as with any other manufacturer, his efforts are constantly directed towards obtaining the original rude material as cheap and as good as possible.

Among this 'rude material' not a little is to be found that was formerly looked upon as mere waste, or, worse than that, mixed with the water or the soil of the towns, to the great injury of the public health.

We are wiser now in the twenty-first century.

Everything by which the produce of the fields can be increased is carefully collected, and life is thereby much better protected."

Modern Telescopes.

I had already noticed, during the conversation, that our aërial conveyance had assumed a gentle swinging position; and when Bacon paused in his remarks, Miss Phantasia cried to me, "Do, now, apply your eye to these pseudo-cannons, and tell us, pray, where we are."

I found at once that those tubes which I had mistaken for cannons were enormous telescopes; but my mistake was pardonable enough, so far as their outward appearance went.

They were certainly much wider, from which I concluded, à priori, that they must be powerful machines; but when I came to look through them, I discovered that their great width did in no way interfere with the sharp outlines of the images, and I was not only very much struck with their immense magnifying power, but at the same time with their great extent of the field of vision.

Following Miss Phantasia's finger direction, the first thing I saw before me through the telescope at the stern of the vessel was an immense city, which I fancied could be no other than Londinia, from whence we had started.

A vast cluster or mass of houses presented itself, with the sharpest outline, in the somewhat dull background, but no idea of smoke; I therefore concluded that wherever coals were still used, one knew how to pass the smoke through the cowl or fire-grate in accordance with the wise Act of Parliament passed in 1850. As I looked through the different telescopes which we had on board, I could not help admiring the scenery around and about us, which seemed to rush and rush on before our eyes whilst the ship was apparently lying still.

Ascending, it was as if the earth went down beneath us.

Shortly after, we caught the first glance of the sea, and right before us, opposite, we perceived the Belgian and French coasts.

A

black wire seemed to cross the narrowest strait of the Channel, so as to join the two opposite shores together.

Channel Bridge.

As we came nearer I began to suspect that this wire might be a tubular bridge of some kind, and this surmise grew into certainty when Bacon assured me that a company had already been formed for the purpose of constructing a second one; "for," added my informant, "this one has become utterly inadequate to the extensive communication between England and the continent."

North Holland Submerged.

A slight north-north-easterly direction, and a few minutes sufficed to bring us near to my native home, which to us, from our vessel, looked like its outline in an atlas.

Only how terrified I was to see that there was something wanting on the map.

The whole province of North Holland, [12] minus a few diminutive islands, seemed to have disappeared.

Not even trusting my eyes, I asked the "trunculant figure" who, Bacon said, was my countryman: Was the whole of North Holland imbedded in the sea?

"So it is," was the answer.

"That's the result of not heeding the advice of common-sense, prudent people.

A handful of bragging citizens of Amsterdam insisted upon it, that they should have a canal right across into the sea.

They had one already, in which they might have made some improvements, but that would not satisfy them.

Well, after a good deal of agitation, they got their canal.

How much it may have cost them I do not pretend to know; no doubt a good deal more than many of them must have liked.

However, now that they had it, it proved, after all, 'a fair-weather Jack;' for as soon as the wind lost its temper--and such things do happen along our coast--the skippers did not venture to come too near to the shore.

At the first November storm the harbour became full of sand, to clear which would have been to wash the negro.

"Thus the canal had had little power to benefit navigation.

Still, matters did not come to the worst until, in 1980, the springtide fell in simultaneously with a storm such as the memory of living man could not trace.

Sluices and dykes gave way, and North Holland, the greater portion of which was situated from one to five meters [13] below the mean level of the sea, was rapidly swallowed up by the raging element.

Shortly after the play-going public of Rotterdam enjoyed a new drama, entitled 'The Horse of Troy.'

" [14] "Terrible, terrible!"

I could not refrain from exclaiming, although the man who supplied me with the "terrible" information did not appear to see it.

I had already inferred from the latter part of his remarks that he was a native of Rotterdam, and this suggested to me the idea of once more looking through the telescope, and turning my looks towards the city where I had passed the earlier part of my youth.

At first I did not feel at home at all.

So much had the city of the Meuse enlarged itself into every direction, and so densely populated was the whole province of South Holland, that the towns of Leiden, the Hague, Delft, Schiedam, and Rotterdam seemed to form but one large city.

Utrecht, too, appeared to have grown in extent.

My eye fell accidentally on a bright dazzling spot, lighted up by the rays of Phoebus; and, anxious to find out what that was, I applied a stronger "oculaire" to the telescope, and soon recognised the golden sun of Justice, the well-known armorial bearings of the Utrecht University, on the top of a large and magnificent building.

I thought that must be the University building, and inquired of the "trunculant figure;"

but the latter answered curtly, "That's entirely out of my line, sir;

those are things with which I have nothing to do."

Fortunately for me, Bacon had heard my question, and he at once supplied me with the necessary information.

"You have guessed rightly," said he; "when, after many years' waiting, there came at last a bill regulating the higher education in the Netherlands, some wealthy inhabitants of the city of Utrecht, at their own expense, founded this magnificent and imposing building, and by so doing furnished a living illustration of their interest in science, and of their affection for the alma mater to which many of them owed their education and social position."

Thanking Bacon for this valuable piece of information, I further ventured to inquire whether in the new educational bill the principle had been recognised "that it is a matter of perfect indifference where any candidate had obtained the knowledge required by the law, and that the state had no other right but to demand this of the candidate, that he satisfy the government examiners with regard to his abilities."

"Here you are doubtless touching a knotty point," answered my companion; "for this has been a matter of discussion for some time;

and, strange to say, those that have given the most definite opinions on it are exactly those that were least competent to judge in the matter of public examinations.

At first sight the principle you have laid down certainly appears reasonable enough.

Those who, with you, appear to have accepted it, argue mathematically as follows: Given a certain quantity of linseed, then by the same press, and with the same amount of pressure, it will yield a certain amount of oil, and the latter will consequently indicate the exact relative value of the different kinds of linseed.

It all amounts to this, to find a good press, one in regular working order.

It is not otherwise with public examinations.

These, too, are a kind of press, under which are to be brought the persons to be examined, and out of them are to be squeezed a dose of knowledge prescribed as the sine quâ non of their admission.

It only requires to have a good examination press, and the results will always admit of comparison; that is to say, they will be just and fair.

"But here a curious difficulty had to be surmounted.

It is easy enough to construct presses from iron or wood that will work regularly;

but with examination presses that is altogether a different affair.

Especially with regard to those for the higher branches of education the matter is not so easily procurable.

And then there is another thing; neither are the examiners composed of wood and iron, nor are the students that have to be examined usually made of linseed; both classes of persons are more likely to be rational beings; the contract between them entails action and reaction, with thousandfold variations, so that there can never be any question of absolutely comparable results, least of all when the examiners and the examined are more or less strangers to each other.

Leaving out other difficulties, there would still remain the very natural resistance which such heterogeneous elements would exercise towards each other, a resistance which will always be commensurate with the greater or lesser difference of interests in the parties concerned.

"In order now to overcome this difficulty, and to save the principle that "those aspiring to equal rights should satisfy equal conditions," the Government issued certain text-books in the form of examination guides.

And what was the consequence?

Industrious persons arose, and contrived to invent means by which to make those works essentially practical, and the examinations as light as possible; they composed little books containing questions and answers, something like catechisms, for every branch of science.

This appeared to some people to be the height of examinatorial equality; but when, in spite of all this, the same complaints continued to be heard about the unfairness and arbitrary ways of examiners, the still more novel idea was mooted, whether it was not possible to solve the examination problem by a direct method, viz.

, physico-mechanically.

For a long time past we had had speculums for the eye, for the ear, for the throat, etc. ; why should we not succeed in inventing a speculum for the brain?

There were already self-registering thermometers, barometers, magnetometers, photometers, etc. ; why should we not have the self-registering enkephalometer?

machines which in a few minutes, and by means of a few figures, would indicate the exact degree and amount of knowledge acquired by the individual to whose cerebrum the instrument might be applied!

What a splendid invention, both for examiners and candidates, this would have been!

Unfortunately the thing always proved impracticable; and the idea now ranks with the visions of perpetual motion and squaring of the circle.