Life — January 5, 1922 — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

seriously that forecast of the British Journal of Astrology which plants Armageddon a little way down the road, and insists that we have that still to get over before we get to “universal peace.” The astrologers insist, there- fore, that our world has got to be worse before it is better. That it will be bet- ter presently, very much better, they admit, but their view of the preliminary interval is not reassuring.. What we would all prefer is to skip the prelimi- naries and get things into a comfort- able case without any more wholesale discipline. Still, practical men do take thought of a possible Armageddon. Our Mr. Secretary Weeks, for one, declares that if we have another war we should conscript every person in the United States between eighteen and sixty years old. Some would fight, the rest would work at whatever they were best suited to do. Mr. Weeks would try not to have profiteers in another war, and not to be embarrassed by having the fight- ing men come home and say that the stay-at-homes got higher wages. UT we must not expect too much of this world. The World (news- paper) reports Conan Doyle, who, as everybody knows, is a campaigning spiritualist, as describing Heaven, in a church address, as.a place with all the comforts of home. He expects to be very comfortable indeed there and feels that he has good information that war- rants that prospect. y But heaven, or the next plane, or whatever in modern speech one prefers to call it, has great advantages over earth. Earth is run ona system of free will; heaven apparently on a system of prompt concurrence with the ad- ministration. The management of that country is so much better than that of this that obedience is safe and does not set anybody back, whereas here whom should one obey? The only real guide for conduct that we have is our inner. sense of right and wrong, tempered by the fear of the police, or of the neigh- bors, or the newspapers, or of the banks. Our governments are bad. Our politicians are bad. Our fellow crea- tures are no better than they should be. The conditions of life are mostly in- herited from times quite different from these, and we ourselves have defects— some of them congenital and many ac- quired. Being what we are and living LIFE in such a world as we make, we have to be patient with ourselves and all our neighbors, and should always remember that our main job in this life is so to develop and improve, as in due time to be fit for translation. If we got our training in Conan Doyle’s. Heaven, and then came here to practice our accom- plishments, it would be another story. ‘HERE is a reason for everything. No doubt, the reason for a holiday at New Year's is that survivors of Christmas may get rested. And while we are resting, a few thoughts for our 15 jaded minds! Will the improved world that Mr. Wells contemplates provide for monogamy or for casual wives? It is a difficult matter but important. Is it not possible that even our pres- ent defective government can arrange that honest people may not have such terrible struggles with bookkeeping? The mass of us know about as much about bookkeeping as we do about wire- less, yet the government expects us to be experts. Drat government! Somebody has estimated that because Japan wants to keep the Mutsu, Britain will have to spend twenty-two million pounds on two new ships. We have a couple ninety per cent. finished. Can’t she have them at junk prices and save that money ?- E. S. Martin. another saw?” comicbooks.com