LESSON 1 THE DYING SUN (Sir James Jeans)

Scarcely, barely,
A few stars are known which are hardly bigger than the earth, but most of them are so Fill up, put things in,
large that hundreds of thousands of earths could be packed inside each and leave room Big, enormous, huge
Hold, carry, comprise
to spare; here and there we find an immense star large enough to contain millions and
millions of earths. And the total number of stars in the universe is probably something Perhaps, possibly

like the total number of grains of sand on all the seashores of the world. Such is the Calculate, determine
littleness of our home in space when measured up against the total substance of the
Material, matter, mass
universe.
These millions of stars are wandering about in space. A few form groups which Roam, drift, stray, stroll
Together, in group, in team
journey in company, but most of them travel alone. And they travel through a universe
so immense that it is very, very rare event indeed for one star to come anywhere near to Occasional, unusual, seldom
Journey, travel
another. For the most part each star makes its voyage in complete loneliness, like a ship
on an empty ocean. In a scale model in which the stars are ships, the average ship will Median, standard, normal
be well over a million miles from its nearest neighbour. From this it is easy to
understand why a star seldom finds another anywhere near it. Occasional, infrequent, rare
We believe, however, that some two thousand million years ago this rare event
took place, and that another star, wandering blindly through space, happened to come Rashly, unthinkingly, mindlessly

near the sun. Just as the sun and moon raise tides on the earth, so this second star must Produce, lift, build, increase
have raised tides on the surface of the sun. But they would be very different from the
Wave, flow, current
little tides which the small mass of the moon raises in our oceans; an immense tidal
wave must have traveled over the surface of the sun, at last forming a mountain so high
Disorder, churning, disruption
that we can hardly imagine it. As the cause of the disturbance came nearer and nearer,
the mountain would rise higher and higher. And before the second star began to move
away again, its tidal pull had become so powerful that this mountain was torn to pieces
and threw off small parts of itself into space. These small pieces have been going round
the sun ever since. They are the planets, great and small, of which our earth is one.
The sun and the other stars we see in the sky are all extremely hot-far too hot for life Greatly, highly, exceedingly
to exist on them. So also no doubt were the pieces of the sun when they were first
Slowly, steadily, step by step
thrown off. Gradually they became cooler, until now they have very little heat of their
own left, their warmth coming almost entirely from the radiation which the sun pours Emission of rays, radioactivity
down on them. In course of time one of these cooling pieces gave birth to life. We do
Living things, beings, creature
not know how, when or why this happened. It started in simple organisms, whose living
power consisted chiefly in their being able to reproduce themselves before dying. But Procreate, clone, give birth
from these humble beginnings came a stream of life which, growing ever more and Ordinary, meek, modest
Flow, current, torrent
more complex, has in the end produced beings whose lives are largely centred in their
feelings and ambitions, their sense of beauty, and the religions in which lie their highest
hopes and noblest desires.
Although we cannot speak with any certainty, it seems most likely that the human
race came into existence in some such way as this. Standing on our little grain of sand, Find, know, detect, explore
we try to discover the nature and purpose of the universe which surrounds our home in
space and time. Our first feeling is something like fear. We find the universe frightening Fearful, horrible, terrifying

because of its immense distances which we do not understand, frightening because of

the stretches of time so great that we cannot imagine them, making the whole of Expanse, vastness, hugeness
human history so very small in comparison, frightening because of our extreme
loneliness, and because of the littleness of our home in space-a millionth part of a grain
of sand out of all the sea-sand in the world. But above all else, we find the universe
frightening because we cannot find any sign that life like our own exists anywhere in it
except on the earth. Indeed, for the most part, empty space is so cold that all life in it
would be frozen. Most of the matter in space is so hot as to make life on it impossible.
Life does not seem to have any part in the plan of the universe which produced our Of planets, global, worldwide
planetary system. Calculation shows that there can be only very few such systems in
space. Yet, so far as we can see, life of the kind we know on earth can exist only on Proper, apt, appropriate
planets like the earth. It needs suitable physical conditions for its appearance, the most
important of which is a temperature at which substances can exist in a liquid state.
The stars themselves are far too hot for this. We may think of them as a collection Spread, strewn, dispersed
of fires scattered through space, providing warmth in surroundings where the
temperature is at most some four degrees above absolute zero, that is, about 484
degrees of frost on the Fahrenheit scale. In the immense stretches of space beyond the Collection of stars, constellation

Milky Way, it is colder still. Away from the fires there is this un-imaginable cold of
hundreds of degrees of frost; close up to them there is a temperature of thousands of
degrees, at which all solids melt, all liquids boil. Strip, ribbon, region, zone
Life can exist only in a narrow belt surrounding each of these fires at a certain
distance where the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold. Outside these belts life
would be frozen; inside it would be burnt up. A rough calculation shows that all such
temperature belts, within which life is possible, all added together, make up less than a
thousand million millionth part of the whole of space. And even inside them, life must
Uncommon, rare, seldom
be very rare, for it is extremely unusual for suns to throw off planets as our sun has
done. Probably only one star in 100,000 has a planet going round it at the right distance
for life to be possible on it.

LESSON 2 USING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD (Darrel Barnard & Lon Edwards) Profit, gain, take advantage
All of us have benefited greatly from the use of scientific method in solving Upkeep, care, continuance
problems such as those dealing with the maintenance of health, the production and
preservation of foods, the construction of our homes, and the improvement in
communication and transportation. Not only have our ways of living changed, but Event, incident, occurrence
people themselves have also been changed. Today we are better able to explain Puzzling, weird, enigmatic
happenings which used to be considered strange and mysterious. Although there is still
Censorious, analytical, picky
need for improvement, we are now generally less fearful than our fathers and
grandfathers were. We are also more critical in our thinking than our ancestors. Forefathers, predecessors
This lesson should help you understand how the use of scientific method has
improved living conditions and changed people. It should also help you understand how
you can make better use of the scientific method in your everyday living.

Better Control of Disease. If you had been born two hundred years ago, you would have
had about one chance in eight of living to be one year old. In other words, in those days
about seven out of eight babies died before reaching their first birthday. Suppose you
had been an unusually strong little fellow and had lived through that first year. Very
likely, before you were six years old, you would have had smallpox, and by the time you Certainly, surely, obviously
reached the age of twelve, you would undoubtedly have had measles, whooping cough,
scarlet fever, and diphtheria. Even then your battle for life was not over. Yellow fever, Region, area, locality
malaria, typhus, cholera, typhoid fever, and even influenza, once started, spread
Lucky, blessed, favoured
through a community. Life was most uncertain. A person who lived to be more than Incredible, beyond belief
thirty years of age was indeed fortunate. It is unbelievable that such conditions could
Chances, possibility,
have existed so short a time ago. Today babies are born in hospitals where there is little probability
likelihood of their getting a disease. Young people are treated to protect them against
Hope, look for, anticipate
smallpox, diphtheria, and typhoid fever. Today a person can expect to live to be almost
seventy years old. In other words, more than thirty years have been added to the
Stop, control, avoidance
expected length of man's life. These changes have been made possible by use of the
scientific method to solve such problems as the causes of disease and its prevention.
Clean, hygienic, healthful

Better Sanitary Conditions. It is difficult to imagine what sanitary conditions in some of Not paved, not covered
Poor draining system
our larger cities were like only one hundred years ago. Into the narrow, unpaved, and Waste, rubbish, trash
poorly drained city streets household garbage and other refuse were thrown. Animals Rubbish, waste, junk

wandered through the streets, feeding upon the garbage. Outdoor toilets were
common, many of them situated where human wastes drained into wells from which
people obtained drinking water.
Today our city streets are paved and well drained, and they are cleaned regularly. It Drain water, sewerage

is against the law to throw garbage in the streets. Sewage from all sections of a city is
Show, indicate, illustrate
carried through sealed pipes to disposal plants. Through the use of the scientific
method, it has been demonstrated that unsanitary conditions cause the spread of
diseases like typhoid fever, cholera and dysentery. Today most city governments have
departments of sanitation which keep the cities clean and thereby prevent the spread of
Large, big, sizeable
certain diseases.
A century ago, it was common practice in many cities to bring water by the Thriftily, economically,
carefully
bucketful for household use. Water had to be carried a considerable distance from the
well to the home. It was, therefore, used very sparingly for bathing and cleaning
purposes. Often it came from sources that contained disease-producing germs.
Towns and cities today have water systems that usually provide water enough for
household use. One of the most important problems in the growth of cities has been to Conduct, channel,
provide sufficient water to meet the many needs of an increasing population. Los watercourse
Angeles has solved the problem by bringing water to the city from the Colorado River, Noteworthy, exceptional,
544 kilometres away. Carried through a pipeline, or aqueduct, a thousand million litres notable
of water are delivered to the district daily. This is a remarkable advance from the bucket
system of supplying homes with water.

More Food and Better Food. Changes have taken place, too, in our eating habits.
Through the use of science, we have learned that it is healthful to eat many kinds of
food, and we have learned how to provide ourselves with a variety of foods throughout
the year. People who lived a century ago probably enjoyed eating as much as we do
today, but they could not have as many different kinds of food. Most of their foods had
to be produced on their own farms or in their own gardens. Since fresh vegetables could Careful, frugal, prudent
be obtained only during the growing season, people living in cold climates had none Conserve, protect, save
during the winter months. Thrifty housewives preserved their home-grown vegetables
and fruits by canning, pickling, or drying them for use during the cold weather. Meats Seashore, shore, seaside
were preserved by salting and drying or by freezing when the weather was cold enough.
Seafoods were generally available only along the coast, fish and shellfish could be eaten Irrespective of, heedless of
soon after they were caught.
Regardless of where people live today, they can obtain some fresh fruits, meats and Healthy, wholesome, nourish
Chose, pick out
vegetables throughout the year. By the quick-freeze method, vegetables, fruits, Classify, categorize
seafoods, and meats of various kinds can be preserved so that they are both nutritious Manage, organize, handle
and enjoyable. Modern methods of selecting, grading, and processing foods have Drying up, removal of water
removed the risk or danger of poisoning from canned foods, dehydration, or the
removal of water from such foods as milk, eggs, potatoes, and apples, has proved a
practical method of preservation.
Our eating habits are not the only things in our lives changed by the use of science.
Because we have used science to learn more about the processes and materials in our
surroundings and about the methods of controlling them, we have been able to improve
our ways of building houses, our methods of communication and transportation, and
Behaviour, view point,
even the way we spend our leisure time. outlook

Spell, amulet, talisman

Better Attitudes. By an attitude we mean the way we feel toward some idea or some
event. If a person believes that wearing some kind of charm will prevent him from Baseless fears, delusion
Credulous, irrational
having bad luck, he will wear the charm, and will feel uncomfortable without it. Feelings
which involve fears such as this are called superstitions. Superstitious people believe in Affected, impelled, controlled
signs of good or bad luck, and their lives are greatly influenced by such signs.
Superstitious beliefs are being overcome by using the scientific method to
demonstrate that there is no sound basis for them. Few people today believe that
diseases are caused by evil spirits. Though astrology and fortune-telling are still
practiced, they do not influence the lives of as many people as they once did. It has
been learned that there is always a good natural reason for everything that happens to
people. As a result, most people no longer fear black cats, broken mirrors, and the
number 13. Agreeable, suitable, pleasing
By the scientific method it has been demonstrated that ideas are not necessarily Broad-mindedness, unbiased
true because they have been believed for a long time. Ideas must now be supported by Ready, eager, desirous
Suppose, presume, reckon
facts in order to be acceptable to the scientist or to people who use the scientific
method.
The discoveries of scientists have helped people develop an attitude of open- Results, ending, winding up
mindedness. They are more willing to look for new truths than to assume that what has
been considered true will always be true. Because people have had to change their old
ideas as a result of new discoveries made by scientists, they are less likely to accept
conclusions as final.

LESSON 3 WHY BOYS FAIL IN COLLEGE (Herbert E. Hawkes)

Of the boys who do not reach their natural academic boundary during the course of
their college career, but who fail to get through, there are two main classes: those who
try, and those who do not try. Many boys attempt seriously to make good, and really
have the native ability to do so, but find it almost impossible to sit at a desk and
concentrate on the tasks assigned. There is the boy who sits down to study, opens his
book, but before starting on his work says to himself, "I think that I had better sharpen
my pencil; it needs it badly." And when he has sharpened it, he observes that all his
pencils need sharpening. And so on, until his time is gone and nothing has been done.
Such nervous habits are not easy to uproot, and, so far as I can see cannot be
eradicated by anyone but the boy himself. Others can see the difficulty, but the boy
must take himself by the collar and make himself cultivate a poise and calm that
smothers the fidgets. Until he does this, he does not really try, although he thinks he's
trying and often spends more time in the presence of an open book than many a boy of
equal ability who does good work.
A common cause of failure is a mistaken ambition for the boy on the part of his
parents. More often than I should wish, I find a boy who is not showing any interest in
his work, and who is not trying to do it with any distinction, because he is following a
direction, mapped out by his parents, that runs counter to all of his interests and
abilities. I have made a number of very warm enemies among the parents of college
students by telling them that I am certain that the good Lord never intended their son
to be a physician, or a dentist, or an engineer. It may be that the boy has ability enough
to be anyone of these things, but the long and short of it is, he does not want to be. He
wants to be a theatrical manager, or a businessman, or a book-illustrator. It may be
unreasonable for the boy to turn his back on a fine opening in the dental profession in
favour of business. But reason cannot control all of these matters. As well argued with a
person that he ought to like onions when he detests them. As a general thing, the boy
wins out in such controversies. And he should. Also, be it said, the parent whom I have
offended usually comes around after a term of years and tells me that his son was right
and that he is thankful to me for taking the part of the boy in the argument. If such a
boy fails, it is because he cannot bring himself to try to do the work that is distasteful to
him, and that he feels is leading him in the wrong direction. If the college is alive to its
work of advice, such cases are caught before the failure is complete.
Another type of boy who does not try is the very bright boy who has always done
his school work without effort, and who has never learned what real application is. He
supposes that he can float through college with as little effort as he did through school. I
sometimes think that the bright boy who has always depended on his ability to get
things quickly, is the most pitiable object among all our failing students. For it is almost a
tragedy to see all of this keenness going to waste, and to feel that the entire
opportunity which the college has to offer is passed up because of a too receptive mind.
The cure for this sort of thing is again not easy. for it involves an entire change of
attitude, and the forming of a completely new set of habits. No one can do this but the
boy himself. All that the rest of us can do is to point out what is the matter.
The question of health, both physical and mental, is always one of the reasons for
failure. If an adequate health service is available in the college, and if proper
cooperation exists between the teaching staff and the office of the college doctor, an
immense number of failures can be avoided, and, what is just as important, the reason
for inability to do satisfactory college work can be clearly understood by the boy, his
parents and the college authorities. In the case of poor academic work, the reason for
which is not apparent, it is my custom always to ask the student to undergo a thorough
physical examination. It is surprising to find out in how large a percentage of such cases
the university physician finds an adequate reason for the difficulty. Tuberculosis, bad
tonsils, sleeping sickness, poor digestion, various forms of mental and nervous difficulty
have been brought to light by the doctor during the past few months, to the
unspeakable relief of the student and enlightenment of the faculty. Occasionally, one
meets an old-fashioned person like the father who told me a few months ago that,
although we had arranged to have his son's tonsils removed without expense, he would
not consent to the operation. He asserted that Allah put those tonsils in his son's throat
for some good purpose, and that he would not stand for their removal. Since the boy
was absorbing too much poison to permit proper application to his college work, we had
to ask him to go home. Of course, such cases are rare. But it is necessary to keep
constantly in mind the simple fact that there is no substitute for health, and that,
however such a man may know, it is not of much value unless he possesses the physical
vigour to bring it to bear on the world's problems.
Nowadays, when most ambitious boys want to go to college, the financial pressure
is a very serious one. A few parents take the position that the boy should earn his way
through college for the good of his soul. As a matter of fact, no boy ought to be
compelled to earn his entire way through college if it can in any way be avoided. Not
only does he get a mighty poor living by the process, but a mighty poor education as
well. If the boy ought to go to college at all, he ought to be trusted to make good use of
reasonable contribution from his parents toward his expenses. Any parent owes this
much to his son. The boy did not ask his parents to bring him into the world. They are
responsible for his being here, and consequently they have the responsibility for giving
him the best equipment possible to meet the world's problems.
Nevertheless, many boys are cast entirely on their own resources for their college
expenses. And it is always to the detriment of their health, or the value of their
education, or both. Any boy can earn a part of his expenses without hurting himself, and
in my experience many boys are willing to earn more than their share in order to save
the burden of their parents. But to see boys by the dozen take jobs lasting from six
o'clock in the evening till two in the morning, six days in week; to see boys undergoing
transfusion of blood to get money for their food and books, is a heartrending spectacle.
Many of our boys of finest character and excellent ability are doing just this kind of
thing. And inevitably it is an important reason for apparent failure. Most colleges do all
they can with scholarship funds to alleviate this situation, but even when everything
possible is done, every dean who knows his students can recall many cases of boys who
have been obliged to drop out for the lack of a little money to see them through.
There are always a goodly number of undergraduates whose heads are turned and
whose judgement is perverted by the attractiveness of athletic sports and literary (so
called) activity. All of these features of college life have their place, and should receive
the support of those students who are interested in them. In my experience, the
awakening of a clear judgement as to what the college is for, is not as difficult as is often
supposed. If a boy is too much interested in these side shows he ought to get out of the
main tent and become professional. But most of them really are not, and if reasoned
with by a friend who knows youth and understands the importance of the college
opportunity, they will not allow themselves to be swept off their feet by athletics. I do
not think that this sort of thing is as serious a reason for failure as do some of the critics
of our colleges who see things from the outside and at a long range.
A few lazy bluffers drift into college and usually drift out again. Most of them have
not found any serious interest in life, and some of them never will. It is usually wise to
let them retire to the cold world for a reason and find out by experience how much
demand there is for a lazy bluffer. Sometimes they learn their lesson and return to do
first rate work. But the burden of proof is always on them to show that they mean
business.
On the whole, the problem that the college dean faces calls for about the same
diagnostic ability as the physician's. He is helping the young men under him to see life
steadily and see it whole. If he can save boys from failure through foolishness, sickness
and sin, he is doing his part of the job.
________________________________________________________________________
LESSON 4 END OF TERM (David Daiches)
I believe a school teacher wrote a book some years ago with title "Friday Thank
God". That phrase expresses perfectly my attitude to the arrival of the weekend during
term time when I was a school boy. The daily grind of school, with its abundant
homework, its fierce competition, the sense of never being able to relax, pressed heavily
upon me in spite of the fact that I often enjoyed the actual classroom work. Waking up
in the morning with the knowledge that one simply had to get out of bed, that there
was no possibility of turning over for an extra doze, and seeing the hours of school
stretching ahead, was a dismal experience, especially on a Monday. We had a maid once
who would climb each morning with grim steps up to the attic floor where Lionel and I
slept in one bedroom and my sister Sylvia in another, and announce in deep, funeral
tones: "Lionel, David, Sylvia-time!" I used to lie waiting for that ominous tread on the
uncarpeted attic stairs, and the voice it heralded sounded in my ears like a summons to
damnation. The anticipation was always worse than the reality. I don't remember ever
being especially unhappy in class; but the oppressive weight of the knowledge of a full
day's school ahead remained a characteristic sensation of my childhood and
disappeared only after I had left school and entered the university, where the smaller
number of classes to be attended and the freedom of the student to come and go
meant a completely new kind of academic world. To wake up on a Thursday morning to
feel the end of the week already lying ahead: Friday morning was positively rose-
coloured. The last 'period' (as each of our lessons was called) on a Friday, whatever the
subject, had its special happy flavour of the end of the week, and one walked home
from school on a Friday afternoon (however much homework had been assigned for the
Monday) with the tread of an escaped prisoner. Friday night, with two solid days before
school again, was the best night of the week; Saturday night, with still a whole day
between it and Monday, was pleasant in a quite different way; Sunday night was full of
the threat of Monday morning.
Sometimes there were unexpected respites- a half holiday to let us attend a
football match which some unforeseen circumstances had caused to be cancelled the
preceding Saturday, or the sudden dismissal of school an hour or two before the usual
time because of some unexpected crisis or celebration. But these were few and far
between. Once a term we had the annual mid-term holiday, a Monday off, which made
a luxuriously long weekend (but it seemed to go just as fast as ordinary weekends), and
occasionally in winter if there had been a continuous hard frost for some days, we
would get a whole day's 'skating holiday'. These were blessed breaks in routine, but not,
of course, comparable to the holidays we got at Christmas and at Easter-three weeks
each in my earlier school days, later tragically reduced to a fortnight and then (if my
recollection of loss is not misleading me) to a mere ten days. But 'the' holidays were the
summer holidays, the two months' vacation we got in the summer time, and it was
these months towards which the whole year moved.
Two months seemed a long, long time in those days; indeed, I used to have the
feeling that, for all practical purposes, I could look forward to a period of permanent
felicity. I would walk home across the Meadows in the July sunshine, wearing my
summer school clothes of grey cricket shirt, grey shorts, and red Wetson's blazer, and
savour my happiness with conscious relish. I could hardly believe that three strenuous
school terms had indeed rolled away and the longed for, dreamed of almost (it seemed
at times) mythical summer holidays were at hand, unspoilt as yet, lying intact and
promising just ahead. It all seemed too good to be true. Wishes didn't come true in this
life - I knew that: all my early childhood I longed desperately for a tricycle, which my
parents could never afford, and later the wish was transferred to a bicycle, and there,
too I was permanently disappointed. (I bought my first bicycle for myself when I was
twenty-one with prize money I had won at Edinburgh University). How often had I stood
outside sweet shops with empty pockets longing for a penny or two to materialize
somehow or hung on the outskirts of a crowd around an ice- cream barrow wondering
whether the ice-cream man would be miraculously inspired to offer me a 'cornet' or a
'slider' free. These things never happened. (The few pence a week pocket money we
received was to be put into a money box and saved, and during our early childhood
Lionel, Sylvia and I never had anything to spend for ourselves). Yet summer and the
summer holidays did come; the school year did come to an end; and one did find
oneself at last standing by the trunks and suitcases outside No.6, Miller field Place,
waiting for the taxi (glorious vehicle) that was to convey the family and its luggage to the
railway station.

LESSON 5 ON DESTROYING BOOKS (J.C. Squire)

It says in the paper that over two million volumes have been presented to the
troops by the public. It would be interesting to inspect them. Most of them, no doubt,
are quite ordinary and suitable; but it was publicly stated the other day that some
people were sending the oddest things, such as magazines twenty years old, guides to
the Lake District, and back numbers of Whitaker's Almanac. In some cases, one
imagines, such indigestibles get into the parcels by accident; but it is likely that there
are those who jump at the opportunity of getting rid of books they don't want. Why
have they kept them if they don't want them? But most people, especially non-bookish
people, are very reluctant to throw away anything that looks like a book. In the most
illiterate houses that one knows every worthless volume that is bought finds its way to
a shelf and stays there. In reality it is not merely absurd to keep rubbish merely because
it is printed: it is positively a public duty to destroy it. Destruction not merely makes
more room for new books but saves one's heirs the trouble of sorting out the rubbish or
storing it.
But it is not always easy to destroy books. They may not have as many lives as a cat,
but they certainly die hard: and it is sometimes difficult to find a scaffold for them. This
difficulty once brought me almost within the shadow of the Rope. I was living in a small
and (as Shakespeare would say) heaven-kissing flat in Chelsea, and books of inferior,
minor verse gradually accumulated there until at last I was faced with alternative of
either evicting the books or else leaving them in sole, undisturbed tenancy and taking
rooms elsewhere for myself. Now no one would have bought these books. I therefore
had to throw them away or wipe them off the map altogether. But how? There were
scores of them. I had no kitchen range, and I could not toast them on the gas-cooker or
consume them leaf by leaf in my small study fire-for it is almost as hopeless to try to
burn a book without opening it as to try to burn a piece of granite. So, in the end I
determined to do to them what so many people do to the kittens: tie them up and
consign them to the river. I improvised a sack, stuffed the books into it, put it over my
shoulder, and went down the stairs into the darkness.
It was nearly midnight as I stepped into the street. There was a cold nip in the air,
the sky was full of stars: and the greenish-yellow lamps threw long gleams across the
smooth, hard road. Few people were about, and here and there rang out the steps of
solitary travelers on the way home across the bridge to Battersea. I turned up my
overcoat collar, settled my sack comfortably across my shoulders, and strode off
towards the little square glow of the coffee-stall which marked the near end of the
bridge, whose sweeping iron girders were just visible against the dark sky behind. A few
doors down I passed a policeman who was flashing his lantern on the catches of
basement windows. He turned. I fancied he looked suspicious, and I trembled slightly.
The thought occurred to me: "Perhaps he suspects I have swag in this sack." I was not
seriously disturbed as I knew that I could bear investigation, and that nobody would be
suspected of having stolen such goods (though they were all first editions) as I was
carrying. Nevertheless, I could not help the slight unease which comes to all who are
eyed suspiciously by the police, and to all who are detected in any deliberately furtive
act, however harmless. He acquitted me, apparently; and with a step that, making an
effort, I prevented from growing more rapid, I walked on until I reached the
Embankment.
It was then that all the implications of my act revealed themselves. I leaned against
the parapet and looked down into the faintly luminous swirls of the river. Suddenly I
heard a step near me; quite automatically I sprang back from the wall and began
walking on with, I fervently hoped, an air of rumination and unconcern. The pedestrian
came by me without looking at me. It was a tramp who had other things to think about;
and, calling myself an ass, I stopped again. "Now for it," I thought; but just as I was
preparing to cast my books upon the waters, I heard another step- a slow and measured
one. The next thought came like a blaze of terrible blue lightening across my brain:
"What about the splash?" A man leaning at midnight over the Embankment wall; a
sudden fling of his arms: a great splash in the water. Surely, and not without reason,
whoever was within sight and hearing (and there always seemed to be someone near)
would at once rush at me and seize me. In all probability they would think it was a baby.
What on earth would be the good of telling a London constable that I had come out into
the cold and come down alone to the river to get rid of a pack of poetry? I could almost
hear his gruff, sneering laugh: "You tell that to the Marines, my son!"
So far, I do not know how long I strayed up and down, increasingly fearful of being
watched, summoning up my courage to take the plunge and quailing from it at the last
moment. At last, I did it. In the middle of Chelsea Bridge there are projecting circular
bays with seats in them. In my agony of decision, I left the Embankment and hastened
straight for the first of these. When I reached it, I knelt on the seat. Looking over, I
hesitated again. But I had reached the turning-point. "What!" I thought savagely, "under
the resolute mask that you show your friends is there really a shrinking and
contemptible coward? If you fall now, you must never hold your head up again. Anyhow,
what if you are hanged for it? Good God: you worm, better men than you have gone to
the gallows." With the courage of despair I took a heave. The sack dropped sheer. A vast
splash. Then silence fell again. No one came. I turned home; and as I walked, I thought a
little sadly of all those books falling into the cold torrent, settling slowly down through
the pitchy dark, and subsiding at last on the ooze of the bottom, there to lie forlorn and
forgotten whilst the unconscious world of men went on.
Horrible bad books, poor innocent books, you are lying there still: covered, perhaps,
with mud by this time, with only a stray rag of your sacking sticking out of the slime into
the opaque brown tides. Odes to Diana, Sonnets to Ethel, Dramas on the Love of
Lancelot, Stanzas on a First Glimpse of Venice, you lie there in a living death, and your
fate is perhaps worse than you deserved.

LESSON 6 THE MAN WHO WAS A HOSPITAL (Jerome K. Jerome)

It was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver that was out of order,
because I had just been reading patent liver-pill circular, in which were detailed the
various symptoms by which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them
all.
It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement
without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease
therein dealt with in its most virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to
correspond exactly with all the sensations that I have ever felt.
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for
some slight ailment of which I had a touch-hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book,
and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves,
and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I
plunged into- some fearful, devastating scourge, I know and, before I had glanced half
down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly go it.
I sat for a while frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again
turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever-read the symptoms-discovered that I had
typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it -wondered what else I
had got: turned up St. Vitus's Dance - found, as I expected, that I had that too, - began
to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started
alphabetically- read up again and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute
stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to
find, I had only in a modified form and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for
years. Cholera I had with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been
born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady
I could conclude, I had not got, was housemaid's knee.
I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why
hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however,
less grasping feeling prevailed, I reflected that I had every other known malady in the
pharmacology, and I grew less selfish and determined to do without housemaid's knee.
Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being
aware of it: and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were
no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with
me.
I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case it must be from a medical
point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class: Students would have no need to
"walk the hospitals", if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need to do would
be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.
Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse, I
could not at first find any pulse at all. Then, all of sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled
out my watch and timed it. I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to
feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been
induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must have
been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted myself all over my front, from what I
call my waist up to my head, and I went a bit round each side, and a little way up the
back. But I could not feel or hear anything I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as
far as ever it would go, and I shut one eye and tried to examine it with the other. I could
only see the tip, and the only thing that I could gain from that was to feel more certain
than before that I had scarlet fever.
I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit
wreck.
I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks
at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I'm ill; so I
thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. "What a doctor wants", I said,
"is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen
hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each."
So I went straight up and saw him, and he said:
"Well, what's the matter with you?"
I said:
"I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me.
Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is not
the matter with me. I have not got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's
knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else,
however, I have got."
And I told him how I came to discover it all.
Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then
he hit me over the chest when I wasn't expecting it - a cowardly thing to do, I call it - and
immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and
wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it to me, and I put it in my pocket
and went out.
I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist's and handed it in. The man read it,
and then handed it back.
He said he didn't keep it
I said:
"You are a chemist?"
He said:
"I am a chemist. If I were a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might
be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me."
I read the prescription. It ran:
"I lb. beefsteak, every 6 hours.
Ten-mile walk every morning.
Bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don't stuff your head with things
You don't understand."
I followed the directions, with the happy result-speaking for myself that my life was
preserved and is still going on.

LESSON 7 MY FINANCIAL CAREER (Stephen Leacock)

When I go into a bank I get rattled. The clerks rattle me; the wickets rattle me; the
sight of the money rattles me; everything rattles me.
The moment I cross the threshold of a bank and attempt to transact business there,
I become an irresponsible idiot.
I knew this beforehand, but my salary had been raised to fifty-six dollars a month
and I felt that the bank was the only place for it.
So, I shambled in and looked timidly round at the clerks. I have an idea that a
person about to open an account must consult the manager.
I went up to a wicket marked "Accountant." The accountant was a tall, cool devil.
The very sight of him rattled me. My voice was sepulchral.
"Can I see the manager?" I said, and added solemnly, "alone." I don't know why I
said "alone."
"Certainly," said the accountant, and fetched him.
The manager was a grave, calm, man. I held my fifty-six dollars clutched in a
crumpled ball in my pocket.
"Are you the manager?" I said. God knows I didn't doubt it.
"Yes," he said.
"Can I see you," I asked, "alone?" I didn't want to say "alone' again, but without it
the thing seemed self-evident.
The manager looked at me in some alarm. He felt that I had an awful secret to
reveal.
"Come in here," he said, and led the way to a private room. He turned the key in
the lock.
"We are safe from interruption here," he said "sit down."
We both sat down and looked at each other. I found no voice to speak.
"You are one of Pinkerton's men, I presume," he said.
He had gathered from my mysterious manner that I was a detective. I knew what he
was thinking, and it made me worse.
"No, not from Pinkerton's," I said, seeming to imply that I came from a rival agency.
"To tell the truth," I went on, as if I had been prompted to lie about it, "I am not a
detective at all. I have come to open an account. I intend to keep all my money in this
bank."
The manger looked relieved but still serious; he concluded now that I was a son of
Baron Rothschild or a young Gould.
"A large account. I suppose." He said.
"Fairly large," I whispered. "I propose to deposit fifty-six dollars now and fifty dollars
a month regularly."
The manager got up and opened the door. He called to the accountant.
"Mr. Montgomery," he said unkindly loud, "this gentleman is opening an account,
he will deposit fifty-six dollars. Good morning."
I rose.
A big iron door stood open at the side of the private room.
"Good morning," I said, and stepped into the safe. "Come out," said the manager
coldly, and showed me the other way.
I went up to the accountant's wicket and poked the ball of money at him with a
quick convulsive movement as if I were doing a conjuring trick.
My face was ghastly pale.
"Here," I said, "deposit it." The tone of the words seemed to mean, "Let us do this
painful thing while the fit is on us."
He took the money and gave it to another clerk.
He made me write the sum on a slip and sign my name in a book.
I no longer knew what I was doing. The bank swam before my eyes.
"Is it deposited?" I asked in a hollow, vibrating voice.
"It is," said the accountant.
"Then I want to draw a cheque."
My idea was to draw out six dollars of it for present use.
Someone gave me a cheque-book through a wicket and someone else began telling
me how to write it out. The people in the bank had the impression that I was an invalid
millionaire. I wrote something on the cheque and thrust it in at the clerk. He looked at
it.
"What! Are you drawing it all out again?" he asked in surprise.
Then I realized that I had written fifty-six instead of six. I was too far gone to reason
now. I had a feeling that it was impossible to explain the thing. All the clerks had
stopped writing to look at me.
Reckless with misery, I made a plunge.
"Yes, the whole thing."
"You withdraw your money from the bank?" "Every cent of it."
"Are you not going to deposit any more?" said the clerk, astonished. "Never."
An idiot hope struck me that they might think someone had insulted me while I was
writing the cheque and that I had changed my mind. I made a wretched attempt to look
like a man with a fearfully quick temper.
The clerk prepared to pay the money.
"How will you have it?" he said.
"What?"
"How will you have it?"
"Oh".... I caught his meaning and answered without even trying to think.... "in
fifties.
He gave me a fifty-dollar bill.
"And the six?" he asked dryly.
He gave it to me and I rushed out.
As the big door swung behind me I caught the echo of a roar of laughter that went
up to the ceiling of the bank. Since then I bank no more. I keep my money in cash in my
trousers pocket and my savings in silver dollars in a sock.

LESSON 8 CHINA'S WAY TO PROGRESS (Galeazzo Santini)

For twenty-two years China lay forgotten and was even confused with a small island
-one of its provinces-and the flexible Chinese bamboo curtain was countered by a
Western curtain of rigid disregard. Then suddenly that one-fourth of mankind enclosed
in the world's third largest country was brought out of the memory attic, with a loud
bang. The Chinese may have introduced the smile policy, but the Occidentals certainly
launched the warm hug. The crowd of official visitors to Peking, performing a devoted
quasi-pilgrimage, is now more numerous than the battalions of traders who go twice
yearly to the traditional Canton Fair. Seventy-three year old Chou En-Lai will end up
dislocating his right hand if he goes on shaking it at the present rate with delegations
running into hundreds of people at a time, his eyes blinded by the constant flashing of
the official souvenir photographers. The queue of countries on the waiting list to
recognize the People's Republic of China is growing longer with the mounting awareness
of the absurdity of the past oblivion or a political guilt complex for having kept China out
of the U.N. for a long time.
China is now the fashion around the world, and in no uncertain terms. Everywhere
politicians of the most conservative and bourgeois kind are attempting to rebuild for
themselves a compromised career by singing the praises of Mao Tse-Tung.
An Exemplary Social Experiment. When confronting the enigma of the Chinese
planet, too many Westerners have forgotten the Asiatic background and painful colonial
history. But when the Communists came to power in 1949 the vast majority of the
country carried on as it had been doing for the past 2,000 years, in an early Iron Age
economy. And on countless occasions during our visits to the agricultural communes we
were proudly told: "Here we didn't even have the life of the oxen and horses!"
Compared to China in 1949 Russia in 1917 did not have the grim inheritance of a
century of a shattering multi-colonial experience. Russia never suffered China's fate of
such a sharp and pervasive Western impact that it was forced-together with many other
Asiatic civilizations-into a kind of national schizophrenia not just in terms of a split
economy, but above all in terms of a split culture and a split personality.
In China the individual has been rescued from the aftermath of this unfortunate
heritage by the newfound companionship, common purpose and discipline of mass-
organization. Just as the Vietnamese have withstood American technology so the ascetic
militant Chinese have gone straight to the roots of the problems that have plagued
Asian countries for thousands of years the lack of food and low levels of nutrition, gross
inequalities of income and consumption, unemployment and a sense of social
uselessness, and the blind expansion of the cities.
Decentralised Economy. The gigantic Chinese social experiment does not only
concern Asia however, but the West too, which has always claimed to have found the
final answer to the problem of man and civilization. For years the Chinese have been
striving to make the world realize, through their official interpreter and personal friend
of Mao, Edgar Snow, that there are other important things in life besides an increase in
GNP.
The Chinese model cannot be analysed according to its differences from the
Western system. It involves an utterly different approach. It is the creation of a new
world and a new man. The cities show an absence of automobiles (which is "neither
backwardness nor delay, but a rejection," to quote Robert Guillain), advertising, neon
signs, and the three fevers of money, alcohol and sex. Political control over the masses
not only stops the exodus from the countryside, but even manages partly to reduce the
populations of cities.
In the year 2000 China will still be a powerfully agricultural and peasant country, for
its modernization will have occurred without a flight from the fields, which is the price
paid by the West. In China too the average size of farming concerns is growing through
the system of communes, with subdivisions into production brigades and teams, but the
greater part of the peasant masses stay put and carry on their traditional, intensive
labour. Agricultural mechanization is being introduced with considerable caution so as
to avoid upsetting the balance. But the essential point of the matter is that the
agricultural labourer, though possibly deprived of farming machinery, must not and does
not want to be urbanized, but is instead kept on the spot and incorporated in local small
industries. He does not flee to the cities because the industrial road passes through a
technically-oriented agriculture and a decentralized industry. Economic decentralization,
which is perhaps the most important step in Chinese domestic policy since the Great
Proletarian cultural Revolution, has freed China from a traditionally cumbersome
bureaucracy and developed local enterprise to the greatest possible degree of
independence. The 26 Chinese provinces, which are as much as even 4,400 kilometres
apart, could for that matter, subsist on their own in the event of war, while anybody
invading the country would be literally drowned in a sea of people.
This brings us to the human side of this Chinese experiment in creation of a new
world. It is simply a matter of providing that Thomas Hobbes was wrong when he wrote
in his "Leviathan" that "man's condition is a condition of war with everyone against
everyone." What is taking place today in the world's most populous country is therefore
the education and re-education of man. The heart of the matter is the need to root out
selfishness and bring into existence selfless, dedicated men whose happiness consists of
serving their fellow-men in the fullest sense of the human community. In a humanism at
the service of collective welfare, China is striving to conceive modernization as part of a
process of embellishment of the land-scape, development of the people's cultural life
for the benefit of all instead of for the benefit of the placing the needs of man before
those of the machine.
Here is what the Peking "People's Daily" has to say commenting on Mao's famous
maxim: "Rely on your own forces. National machines and equipment are not entirely
indigenous since they possess a number of foreign features. They may replace foreign
machines because they are superior to foreign equipment, they don't require money or
at any rate very little, and are capable of doing great things. It takes much less time to
use indigenous equipment which, when not available, can be promptly prepared.
Indigenous equipment can produce bigger, faster, better and cheaper results. Finally, it
can stimulate the revolutionary spirit of the masses and with this revolutionary spirit all
difficulties can be overcome."
Day in the Life of a 16-year old. How do the students live and what do they think
individually? Despite having to use an interpreter I was able to find out. Here is the
result of my interview with Je Wen-Siu, a sixteen-years old girl who lives in the workers'
district of Peng Pu at Shanghai. She is a pupil in class 3 at the junior school. She will
shortly be taking her diploma. "How do you spend your day?" "I get up at 6 o'clock in
the morning, do a few chores in the house, have breakfast and go to school at 8. I finish
at 11 o'clock. I go home and have lunch. At one thirty I'm back at school again until 3
o'clock. Then I go back home and work." "How much time do you spend on homework
at home?" "Well actually I do my homework at school. At home I go through the lessons
for about an hour. From 4 o'clock on I relax, reading the papers and listening to the
radio." "What news are you most interested in?"" "All political news which illustrate the
national and international situation." "What do you do when you meet with your girl
friends?" I often go out with girls and boys of my age. We do some sports and often play
ping-pong."
Chinese Women. From a Western angle there is a lack of femininity in the Chinese
woman. No beauty products, no mention of sex, either in films or literature. In the land
of opium, drugs are nonexistent. Mao says that women hold up half the sky and women,
for their part, are determined to keep their half raised at the same height as that held
up by men. When the Chinese woman lists the social benefits she enjoys-8 hour working
day, free hospitalization and medical care, nursery and infant schools, 56 paid days
before child birth also without charge-she always concludes by affirming that in the
West women have not yet succeeded in obtaining all this. "However, we Chinese are
working so that the women of the world can be equally happy and enjoy the advantages
we have." This radical change in women's conditions in China has given women a sense
of confidence hitherto unknown to them, a dignity and an undoubted awareness of
carrying out an important role.
Social Security Benefits. The monthly cost of living is officially calculated for every
region of the country. In Peking for example, it was recently quoted at 12-14 yuan a
month (4.805.60 dollars) of which 10 go towards board and 3-4 for rent in State
apartments. Many workers are also housed within the factories. In the agricultural
communes housing is completely free. Certain small expenses such as cinema, theatre,
haircuts and work overalls are also sometimes non-existent.
All medical and hospital treatment is entirely free for every Chinese worker or
peasant, while members of their family only pay 50 per cent. A sick worker receives his
total pay cheque for the first six months, after which he receives only 60 per cent. If,
however, the patient has money problems, then his company steps in with direct
assistance. Each plant, factory or agricultural commune has a health centre and a first-
aid station. Only in more serious cases are the sick sent to hospital. Workers retire at the
age of 60, female workers at 50, or 55 if they do clerical work. The factory can
sometimes agree to keep a worker on after he has passed retirement age. Pensions are
related to work seniority and vary from 50 to 70 per cent of the worker's last wage. Each
factory has a cafeteria where the workers can eat three meals a day for 10-12 Yuan (4-
4.80 dollars) a month. The cafeteria timetable is tied up with company and shift working
hours. Nearly all plants boast nurseries and kindergartens where children are looked
after and fed under the control of a dietician for a very modest sum (about one dollar a
month). Female workers are entitled to 56 days' rest on full salary before giving birth to
children. When a low-wage category worker finds he has to maintain a large family, his
expenses may exceed his income.
The Chinese regime has set up an assistance system guaranteeing a minimum
subsistence level. The company where the worker is employed then intervenes and
raises his salary to equal the cost of living. The commane deals with those peasants
having wages that are too low or who are unable to maintain their family owing to
physical handicaps. It uses money from a specially constituted fund comprising 2 per
cent of the community's annual wage. These assistance schemes in reality are rarely
resorted to, because a family nearly always has more than one source of income.
Industrial working hours are 8 hours a day, six-day a week, leaving one day's holiday
a week (not necessarily Sunday). Normally there is one week's annual vacation, two
weeks if the worker lives far from his family, as well as two national holidays (May 1 and
October 1).
There are two opposite worlds just as the two ways of considering China's future
are opposite. One is the rigid world of figures and prospects based on economic facts as
seen by the West. The other is the world of faith, of the development of Mao thought
throughout China, with the little Red Book. As for Western economic laws, the endless
mass of 800 million people, who can be convinced, governed and directed along the
paths decided by the powers that be, might well overthrow the whole problem from all
sides. Reasoning with the dry yardstick of figures, the contribution of a dollar from each
Chinese would make roughly 800 million dollars and the contribution of a day's work
from each person would mean two million extra labourers for one year without cost to
the State. True, to increase by just one metre per head the availability of cloth for even
as few as 700 million Chinese, you would need enough cloth to go round the world
eighteen times while the purchase of a million and a half tons of grain is only sufficient
to feed the Chinese population for 5 days. The fact remains that when the number is not
simply a juxtaposition of persons, but a compact whole, then it tends to become
"Power". When Mao says that it is the people, and not things, that are decisive, he is
trying in fact to demonstrate that this concept apparently destroyed by modem
technology is still a meaningful one.

LESSON 9 HUNGER AND POPULATION EXPLOSION (Anna McKenzie)

What is it like to be really hungry? I expect that at sometime you have all come
home after an energetic game of football or netball or after a few hours when you have
been too busy to eat, and said, "I'm starving!" But this hunger did not last long. If your
meal was not ready for you, after a few slices of bread and butter you forgot all about
those hunger pangs. But hunger does not mean missing one meal or even meals for a
whole day. It means never having enough to eat. It means, when you have had some
thing to eat at least as much again. It also means a situation in which you are always
wondering where the next meal is coming from or even if there will be a next meal.
Arthur Hopcraft of the Guardian said of starving children after visiting a nutrition centre
in Kenya, "They are the children whose eyes stare as if blind, whose legs and arms are
like sticks of liquorice, who neither cry nor laugh and who weigh 10 lb at the age of two
years!"
Famine has been a problem since the beginning of time. The early hunter suffered
grave shortages during the winter months and quite often these were serious enough to
mean starvation for him and his family.
One of the first records of famine was carved in granite by an Egyptian Pharaoh. He
said, "During my reign the Nile has not been in flood for seven years. Corn is scarce and
food is lacking. Those who ran cannot even walk. The food bins are broken open and
empty. It is the end of everything!"
 We read in the Bible of many cases of famine. There were seven years of famine in
Egypt and the surrounding countryside during the time of Joseph. Widespread disaster
was only averted by the previous compulsory storage of food under Joseph's
management during plentiful harvests. Egypt was saved from famine by this national
effort but many people in the surrounding countries were left hungry. Joseph's own
brothers came to Egypt from Palestine to buy grain.
From the birth of Christ to about 1800, there are records of famine in Europe in 350
different years-one famine every five years. In England during the same period there
was at least one major famine every ten years. These were general famines when a large
area of the country was affected but there were many more local famines. We can get
some idea of these famines from our folk-lore. The stories of Robin Hood often involve
local food shortages with Robin helping with transport of food, robbing the rich to feed
the poor or poaching for them from the Royal forests.
But famines in Europe have been much less serious than in other parts of the world.
China had ninety major famines in one century. Nine and a half million people perished
in a single famine which swept North China in the last century. The Russian famine in
1921-22 killed several million people. Ten million died in the great famine of Bengal
1969-70. As recently as 1942 in Bombay one million starved to death when the rice crop
failed. In India in 1964-65 there was the worst famine of the century, owing to the
failure of the monsoon, and many countries gave sid on a large scale and tried to help.
However, imported food could not solve the problem. Even if there had been enough
availability the ports could not cope with all the ships bringing the cargoes, and
transport problems were so great that the food could not have been distributed to many
of the isolated and hardest hit areas. A year later, India still faced an even worse threat
of famine.
Famine may be caused by many things. It may be that there are just too many
people for the amount of food available. It may be that crops have failed due to disease.
Thousands, even millions, will die of starvation because of famines caused by lack of
rain.
In fact in the world of today, not only is there not enough food, but each year there
are many more people to eat it. The number of people in the world is rapidly increasing
rather like a gigantic snowball which not only gets bigger as it rolls but goes faster as
well. Half a million years ago the population of the world was very small but since then
it has gradually increased, until by the birth of Christ the world population was about
200-300 million. The numbers doubled by 1650 and by 1850 doubled again to 1,000
million. Now the world population is over 3,000 million. The population is increasing at a
rate which would double the numbers in only 40 years. A tremendous population
explosion is taking place. It has been calculated that unless the growth is checked in
some way, within two or three centuries there will only be enough room on the earth
for people to stand up.
The main reason for population increase is due to the number of people who are
born in any year being greater than the number who die - that is the difference between
the birth rate and the death rate. For example, in the U.K. the birthrate for 1963
(number of births per 1,000 population) was 18.2 and the death rate (number of deaths
per 1,000 population) was 11.6. The population is therefore growing at the rate of 6.6
per 1,000 of the population.
In the past only a fraction of the babies bom grew up. Now in the industrial
countries of the West, 19 out of 20 become adults. One couple on an average need only
produce just over two children to replace themselves and keep the population at the
same level.
Among the Western nations the decline in the death rate has been followed after
an interval by the reduction in the birth rate so that the population is not now growing
so fast. But even in these areas where people have only a comparatively small number
of children the low death rate means that the population is still growing fairly rapidly. In
the U.S.A., where on an average each woman has only three children the population
increases by almost half as many again every generation.
In Asia and the Far East the death rate has been reduced rapidly by modern
medicine and epidemic control. In Ceylon, for example, the death rate was reduced by
one third in two years by greatly reducing mortality from malaria. This was due to the
discovery of DDT which killed off the mosquitoes which carry malaria.
Another example is yaws which until recently caused a great many deaths. This
disease starts as little hard pimples which may join together to make blotches. It then
spreads all over the body, forming ulcers. Muscles are destroyed and bones deformed.
The sufferer becomes depressed and feels very ill. Soon after the discovery of penicillin
it was realized that yaws could be cured in most cases by a single injection and in many
others by just two injections. Many countries have carried out massive programmes to
free their countrymen of yaws and in doing so have decreased the death rate rapidly.
The most important and the most difficult thing to achieve is a desire among
individuals to limit the size of the family.
The study of the population growth indicates one of the greatest paradoxes of our
time. The group of countries best able to support a rapidly growing population has a
relatively low birth rate while the group least able to support their present population,
let alone a larger one, has a very high birth rate.
Let us look for a moment at this second group, often called the under-developed
countries, into which so many of the children of the world will be born. Everyone knows
an under-developed country when he sees one. It is a country characterized by poverty,
with beggars in the cities and villagers eking out a bare subsistence in the rural areas. It
is a country lacking factories of its own, usually with inadequate supplies of power and
light. It usually has poor roads and railways and not enough of them. Hospitals and
schools and colleges are few and far between. Most people, particularly older people,
cannot read or write. The goods the country exports are nearly always raw material
which are much more subject to price fluctuations. This will have a bad impact on the
economy.
The gap in living standards is bound to increase. In the past the population has not
only been reduced by famine and disease but also by war. We have the power to abolish
war if we have the will. But if one group of people continues to get poorer and sees its
families and friends suffering great distress and unnecessary death while another group
of people in the world gets richer, we are creating a situation which encourages the
poor to make war on the rich.
The only long-term answer for these countries is to reduce their birth rate. But as I
have explained this will take time and is not easy to achieve. What we must do in the
meantime is to keep alive as many people as we can and at the same time make every
effort to encourage the limitation of families.

LESSON
10
THE JEWEL OF THE WORLD
Hilip K. Hitti
It was in 750 that the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus was overthrown by the Abbasid
family; and accession of the Abbasids to the caliphate was signalized by a ruthless.
extermination of every member of the defeated house on whom the victors could lay
their hands.
Among the very few who escaped was a youth of twenty, Abd-al-Rahman, a striking
young man, tall, lean, with sharp, aquiline features and red hair - a youth of exceptional
nerve and ability. It was he who made his way to Spain, fought his way to mastery, and
kept in power there the Umayyad dynasty which was wiped out in the East.
The story of his escape is dramatic. He was in a Bedouin camp on the left bank of the
Euphrates River one day when horsemen carrying the black standards of the Abbasids
suddenly appeared. With his thirteen-year old brother, Abd-al-Rahman dashed into the
river. The younger brother, evidently a poor swimmer, became frightened, heeded the
reassurances shouted from the bank that he would be unharmed if he returned, and
swam back. He was killed. The older boy kept on and gained the opposite bank.
Afoot, friendless and penniless, he set out south-westward, made his way after great
hardships to Palestine, found one friend there, and set off again toward the west. In
North Africa he barely escaped assassination at the hands of the governor of the
province. Wandering from tribe to tribe, always pursued by the spies of the new
dynasty, he finally reached Ceuta, five years later. He was a grandson of the tenth caliph
of Damascus, and his maternal uncles were Berbers from the district of North Africa.
They offered him refuge.
In the south of Spain, across the strait from Ceuta, were stationed Syrian troops from
Damascus. He made his way to them and they accepted him as leader. One southern
city after another opened its gates to him. It took him some years more to bring all of
Spain to subjection, but he persisted. The Abbasid caliph in Baghdad appointed a
governor of Spain to contest his rule; two years later that caliph received a gift from
Abd-al-Rahman: the head of his governor, preserved in salt and camphor and wrapped
in a black flag and in the letter of appointment. "Thanks be to Allah for having placed
the sea between us and such a foe!" was the caliph's fervent rejoinder.
In the process of subduing his adversaries Abd-al-Rahman developed a well- disciplined,
highly trained army of 40,000 or more Berbers. He knew how to keep their favour by
generous pay. In 757, he discontinued the Friday sermon hitherto delivered in the name
of the Abbasid caliph, but did not assume the caliphal title himself. He and his
successors down to Abd-al-Rahman III contented themselves with the title "amir".
Under Abd-al-Rahman I, Spain had thus been the first province to shake off the
authority of the recognized caliph in Islam.
With his realm consolidated, Abd-al-Rahman turned to the arts of peace, in which he
showed himself as great as in the art of war. He beautified the cities of his domain, built
an aqueduct for the supply of pure water to the capital, initiated the construction of a
wall round it and erected for himself a palace and garden outside Cordova in imitation
of the palace built by an ancestor in north-eastern Syria. To his villa he brought water
and introduced exotic plants, such as peaches and pomegranates. To a lonely palm-tree
in his garden, said to be the first imported from Syria, he addressed some tender verses
of his own composition.
Two years before his death in 788 Abd-al-Rahman founded the great Masjid of Cordova
as a rival to the two masajid of Islam in Jerusalem and Makkah. Completed and enlarged
by his successors, it soon became the shrine of western Islam. With its forest of stately
columns and its spacious outer court, this noble structure, transformed into a Christian
cathedral in 1236, has survived to the present day under the popular name "La
Mezquita", the masjid. Besides the great masjid the capital could already boast a bridge,
over the Guadalquivir (corrupted from an Arabic name meaning "the great river"), later
enlarged to seventeen arches. Nor were the interests of the founder of the Umayyad
regime limited to the material welfare of his people. In more than one sense he initiated
the intellectual movement which made Islamic Spain from the ninth to the eleventh
centuries one of the two centres of world culture.
Caliph Abd-al-Rahman's court was one of the most glorious in all Europe. It received
envoys from the Byzantine emperor as well as from the monarchs of Germany, Italy and
France. Its seat, Cordova, with half a million inhabitants, seven hundred masajid and
three hundred public baths, yielded in magnificence only to Baghdad and
Constantinople. The royal palace, named al-Zahra, with four hundred rooms and
apartments housing thousands of slaves and guards, stood north-west of the town
overlooking the Guadalquivir River. Abd- al-Rahman III started its construction in 936.
Marble was brought from Numidia and Carthage; columns as well as basins with golden
statues were imported or received as presents from Constantinople; and 10,000
workmen with 1,500 beasts of burden laboured on it for a score of years. Enlarged and
beautified by later caliphs, al-Zahra became the nucleus of a royal suburb whose
remains, partly excavated in and after 1910, can still be seen.
In al-Zahra the caliph surrounded himself with a bodyguard of "Slavs" which numbered
3,750 and headed his standing army of a hundred thousand men. With their aid the
caliph not only kept treason and brigandage in check but reduced the influence of the
old Arab aristocracy. Commerce and agriculture flourished and the sources of income
for the state were multiplied. The royal revenue amounted to 6,245,000 dinars, a third
of which sufficed for the army and a third for public works, while the balance was placed
in reserve. Never before was Cordova so prosperous, Andalusia so rich and the state so
triumphant. All this was achieved through the genius of one man. He died at the ripe
age of seventy-three. And he left a statement, we are told, which said that he had
known only fourteen days of happiness.
As always, under any dynasty, sovereignty in the Muslim world, West or East, was
unstable. In Spain the Umayyad dynasty kept the nominal rule from the time Abd-al-
Rahman I imposed it; but by the time of the accession of the next outstanding figure in
the dynasty. Abd-al-Rahman III, in the year 912, civil disturbances and tribal revolts had
reduced the Muslim state of Spain to the city of Cordova and its neighbourhood.
This third Abd-al-Rahman, like his illustrious predecessor, was a young man when he
took office, being only twenty-three; and like him also was a youth of intelligence and
determination. One by one he reconquered the lost provinces, reduced them to order,
and administered them with sagacity and ability. His reign lasted for fifty years, from 912
to 961, an exceptionally long time for that day; it was signalized, politically, by the
proclamation by the amir of himself as caliph. With him the Umayyad caliphate in Spain
begins. His reign. and that of his two immediate successors, mark the height of Muslim
rule in the West. In this period, roughly the tenth century, the Umayyad capital of
Cordova took its place as the most cultured city in Europe and, with Constantinople and
Baghdad, as one of the three cultural centres of the world. With its one hundred and
thirteen thousand homes, twenty-one suburbs, seventy libraries and numerous
bookshops, masajid and palaces, it acquired international fame and inspired awe and
admiration in the hearts of travellers. It enjoyed miles of paved streets illuminated by
lights from the bordering houses, whereas "seven hundred years after this time there
was not so much as one public lamp in London," and "in Paris, centuries subsequently,
whoever stepped over his threshold on a rainy day stepped up to his ankles in mud."
Whenever the rulers of Leon, Navarre or Barcelona needed a surgeon, an architect, a
master singer, or a dress-maker, it was to Cordova that they applied. The fame of the
Muslim capital penetrated distant Germany, where a Saxon nun styled it "the jewel of
the world".
Spain under the caliphate was one of the wealthiest and most thickly populated lands of
Europe. The capital boasted some thirteen thousand weavers and a flourishing leather
industry. From Spain the art of tanning and embossing leather was carried to Morocco
and from these two lands it was brought to France and England, as the terms cordovan,
cordwainer and morocco indicates. Wool and silk were woven not only in Cordova but in
Malaga, Almeria and other centres. The raising of silk worms, originally a monopoly of
the Chinese, was introduced by Muslims into Spain, where it thrived. Almeria also
produced glassware and brasswork. Paterna in Valencia was the home of pottery. Jean
and Algarve were noted for their mines of gold and silver, Cordova for its iron and lead,
and Malaga for its rubies. Toledo, like Damascus, was famous all over the world for its
swords. The art of inlaying steel and other metals with gold and silver and decorating
them with flower patterns, an art introduced from Damascus, flourished in several
Spanish and other European centres.
The Spanish Arabs introduced agricultural methods practised in Western Asia. They dug
canals, cultivated grapes and introduced, among other plants and fruits, rice, apricots,
peaches, pomegranates, oranges, sugar-cane, cotton and saffron. The south-eastern
plains of the peninsula, especially favoured by climate and soil, developed important
centres of rural and urban activity. Here wheat and other grains, as well as olives and
other fruits, were raised by a peasantry who worked the soil on shares with the owners.
This agricultural development was one of the glories of Muslim Spain and one of the
Arabs' lasting gifts to the land, for Spanish gardens have preserved to this day a
"Moorish" character. One of the best-known gardens is the Generalife - a word which
comes from the Arabic, Jannat al'-arif, "the inspector's paradise." This garden,
"proverbial for its extensive shades, falling waters and soft breeze", was terraced in the
form of an amphitheatre and irrigated by streams which, after forming numerous
cascades, lost themselves among the flowers, shrubs and trees represented today by a
few gigantic cypresses and myrtles.
The industrial and agricultural products of Muslim Spain were more than sufficient for
domestic consumption. Seville, one of the greatest of its river ports, exported cotton,
olives and oil. The exports of Malaga and Jaen included saffron, figs, marble and sugar.
Through Alexandria and Constantinople Spanish products found markets as far away as
India and Central Asia. Especially active was the trade with Damascus, Baghdad and
Makkah. The international nautical vocabulary of the modern world contains not a few
words which testify to the former Arab supremacy on the seas-admiral, arsenal,
average,
cable.
The government maintained a regular postal service. It modelled its coinage on Eastern
patterns, with the dinar as the gold unit and the dirham as the silver unit. Arab money
was in use in the Christian kingdoms of the north, which for nearly four hundred years
had no coinage other than Arabic or French.
The real glory of this period, however, lies in fields other than political. Al-Hakam, Abd-
al-Rahman III's successor, was himself a scholar and patronized learning. He was
generous to scholars and established twenty-seven free schools in the capital. Under
him the University of Cordova, founded in the principal masjid by Abd-al-Rahman III,
rose to a place of pre-eminence among the educational institutions of the world. It
preceded both Al-Azhar of Cairo and the Nizamiyah of Baghdad, and attracted students,
Christian and Muslim, not only from Spain but from other parts of Europe, Africa and
Asia. Al-Hakam enlarged the masjid which housed the university, conducted water to it
in lead pipes and decorated it with mosaics brought by Byzantine artists. He invited
professors from the East to the university and set aside endowments for their salaries.
In addition to the university, the capital housed a library of first magnitude. Al- Hakam
was a lover of books; his agents ransacked the bookshops of Alexandria, Damascus and
Baghdad with a view to buying or copying manuscripts. The books thus gathered are
said to have numbered 400,000, their titles filling a catalogue of forty-four volumes, in
each one of which twenty sheets were devoted to poetical works alone. Al-Hakam,
probably the best scholar among Muslim caliphs, personally used several of these
works; his notes on certain manuscripts rendered them highly prized by later collectors.
In order to secure the first copy of the "Aghani", which Al-Isbahani, a descendant of the
Umayyads, was then composing in Iraq, Al-Hakam sent the author a thousand dinars.
The general state of culture in Andalusia reached such a high level at this time that the
distinguished Dutch scholar Dozy went so far as to declare enthusiastically that "nearly
everyone could read and write" - all this when in Christian Europe only the rudiments of
learning were known, and that chiefly by a few churchmen.

FIRST YEAR AT HARROW

Sir Winston S. Churchill
I had scarcely passed my twelfth birthday when I entered the inhospitable regions of
examinations, through which for the next seven years I was destined to journey. These
examinations were a great trial to me. The subjects which were dearest to the
examiners were almost invariably those I fancied least. I would have liked to have been
examined in history, poetry and writing essays. The examiners, on the other hand, were
partial to Latin and mathematics. And their will prevailed. Moreover, the questions
which they asked on both these subjects were almost invariably those to which I was
unable to suggest a satisfactory answer. I should have liked to be asked to say what I
knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly
displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment
had only one result; I did not do well in examinations.
This was especially true of my Entrance Examination to Harrow. The Headmaster, Mr.
Welldon, however, took a broadminded view of my Latin prose: he showed discernment
in judging my general ability. This was the more remarkable, because I was found unable
to answer a single question in the Latin paper. I wrote my name at the top of the page. I
wrote down the number of the question 'T'. After much reflection I put a bracket round
it thus '(T). But thereafter I could not think of anything connected with it that was either
relevant or true. Incidentally there arrived from nowhere in particular a blot and several
smudges. I gazed for two whole hours at this sad spectacle: and then merciful ushers
collected my piece of foolscap with all the others and carried it up to the Headmaster's
table. It was from these slender indications of scholarship that Mr. Welldon drew the
conclusion that I was worthy to pass into Harrow. It is very much to his credit. It showed
that he was a man capable of looking beneath the surface of things: a man not
dependent upon paper manifestations. I have always had the greatest regard for him.
In consequence of his decision, I was in due course placed in the third, or lowest,
division of the Fourth, or bottom. The names of the new boys were printed in the School
List in alphabetical order and as my correct name, Spencer-Churchill, began with an 'S', I
gained no more advantage from the alphabet than from the wider sphere of letters. I
was in fact only two from the bottom of the whole school; and these two, I regret to say,
disappeared almost immediately through illness or some other cause.
I continued in this unpretentious situation for nearly a year. However, by being so long in
the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on
to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were
considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell-a most
delightful man, to whom my debt is great-was charged with the duty of teaching the
stupidest boys the most disregarded thing-namely, to write mere English. He knew how
to do it. He taught it no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing
thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis. Mr. Somervell had a
system of his own. He took a fairly long sentence and broke it up into its components by
means of black, red, blue and green inks: Subject, Verb, Object, Relative Clauses,
Conditional Clauses, Conjunctive and Disjunctive Clauses! Each had its colour and its
bracket. It was a kind of drill. We did it almost daily. As I remained in the Third three
times as long as anyone else, I had three times as much of it. I learned it thoroughly.
Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence - which
is a noble thing. And when in after years my school- fellows who had won prizes and
distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come
down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel
myself at any disadvantage. Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English. I
would make them all learn English; and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an
honour, and Greek as a treat. But the only thing I would whip them for is not knowing
English. I would whip them hard for that.

D G. F. Lamb
If a giant were to pick England up and put it down in the middle of the Sahara desert,
we should have quite a task to find it. The full Sahara area, stretching almost the
complete width of North Africa, is many times the size of Great Britain.
About half of this gigantic area is mainly under French control. Very recently indeed, the
discovery of oil beneath the sand has begun to bring changes: but less than three years
ago most of the area had for countless years consisted of immense stretches of barren
sand, intensely hot during the day, with few water wells and little vegetation. Large parts
were almost uninhabited. In other parts there were just a few towns very widely
scattered, and occasional wandering tribes of Arabs or Berbers.
Hardly the land, one would think, in which to go hitch-hiking. Yet this was just the mode
of travel that Robert Christopher, a young American, decided to adopt in the Sahara
crossing which he began in 1956.
When he was a child, every time he was naughty, his foster-mother used to threaten to
send him to Timbuktu (an ancient city in the heart of French Africa). Instead of alarming
him, the idea aroused in him a keen desire to see this distant place.
By the time he was a young man he was firmly gripped by the wanderlust. His first
adventure was to go round the world at the cost of eighty dollars (about £ 28). After
this, he determined that his next journey should be to travel right across the Sahara
from Algeirs, on the north coast of Africa, to Timbuktu, which is near the river Niger in
the extreme south of the great desert.
The trans-Sahara journey began at a little town, Boussaada, known to the natives as the
"Port of the Sahara," for it is here that the desert really starts. Christopher discovered
that a desert truck was leaving for the south shortly, and he arranged with the driver to
be given a lift as far as it went.
The conditions were agonizing. Three men-driver, greaser and passenger-sat side by side
in the front seat, travelling at a bare 32 kilometres an hour, while the temperature rose
steadily. In two hours a flask of cold water became hot enough to make tea.
Presently a fast moving weapons' carrier over took them. Christopher stopped it and
begged the lieutenant in charge to relieve him from the misery of slowly baking to death
at twenty miles an hour. The lieutenant pointed out that strict military regulations
forbade the carrying of civilians. Christopher replied by producing a permit from the
War Ministry giving him permission to join the French Foreign Legion for a short period
in order to collect material for an article. The permission had later been withdrawn, but
fortunately the lieutenant did not turn the paper over and see the "cancelled" stamp.
He was dropped at the town of Ghardaia, a typical desert city, except that the flies are
even more numerous and stickier than they are anywhere else.
"Anything that has the remotest relationship with food," Christopher states, "is
constantly and completely covered with flies.... They have no hesitation in following the
food right into your mouth, and I had to be vigilant until each mouthful was safely
behind my teeth. I saw many children on the streets, but I got only a vague idea of what
they looked like, for they all wore a mask of flies."
He was able to continue his hitch-hike to the south in the leisurely manner that was so
typical of the desert. On the day of his arrival he discovered that there was a truck due
to leave at once for El Golea. This truck was a new and powerful one, and carried all
kinds of goods- pins and needles, sewing-machines, pots and pans, machine parts. It
weighed ten tons.
For about ten miles outside the town the road continued. Then it stopped. The route lay
across an apparently trackless desert. None the less, the driver (named Hantout) picked
his way with uncanny skill.
It was difficult travelling. At times the sand became too soft to bear the weight of the
heavy truck. It was then necessary to stop at once. If the wheels had been allowed to
spin they would have dug themselves deeper. Ten-foot strips of steel mesh were
dragged from the truck and placed together to make a runway for the wheels to bite on
as the truck moved. When it reached harder ground the strips were collected up and
dragged forward to the waiting truck. Christopher performed useful service in helping
the greaser with this arduous operation.
The driver added to the discomfort of the journey by relating details of a recent case in
which three English people had attempted to cross a part of the desert in a car with only
one day's water-supply. Their car had become stuck in a sand dune, and three days later
their bodies were found dried up like leaves. They had drained the radiator in their
desperate thirst, and one of them tried to drain the oil from the crank-case. Hantout had
been one of the search party, and he spared his listener none of the grim details.
The story came vividly to Christopher's mind on the second morning. The greaser
announced that one of the two goatskin bags of water had burst during the night. Even
if every thing went well, the rest of the journey would not be pleasant.
An outpost with a water-supply was found on one of Christopher's maps, and they set
off towards it. By dawn they had gone fifty miles and dug out of five more sand dunes.
Christopher was sick with thirst; and to add to his misery he had jumped bare-footed
from the driver's cabin on one occasion, not realizing the intense heat of the sand. It
was as if he had jumped into a bed of hot coals. With a scream of pain he hopped back
into the truck.
Meanwhile, his thirst grew fiercer.
"Everything was dead and dry and hot.... My mind was foggy. I was on fire, the inside of
my head felt dried up, and my lungs hurt from the hot air ...... There were times when I
tried to make myself faint, but my head was pounding with such pain that it kept me
conscious."
The outpost was discovered at last and it contained a well full of cool water. They drank
until they could drink no more.
They certainly needed it. The heat was incredible. In the shade of the mud house the
temperature reached 130°F, while out on the sand the thermometer registered 165°F,
which is nearly thirty degrees higher than the highest temperature officially recorded.
El Golea, a hundred miles on, was reached without further mishap. It was a fascinating
little town, a true oasis, with so much water available that they hardly knew what to do
with it. Every day of the week that he was there Christopher spent hours bathing in a
little pool half a kilometre from the centre of the town, shaded by palm-trees and fruit-
trees, or lying on the cool grass beside the pool, watching the birds feasting on the
dates. What a contrast from the desert all around it!
The journey from El Golea to In Salah was not without its excitements. It was made in a
heavy truck carrying ten tones of ammunition, driven by a particularly able and
experienced driver who made his way across the apparently trackless desert, was a
source of constant amazement to Christopher.
During the next day Christopher suffered one of his worst experiences. Bahemed
assured him that it would be a good thing to mix a little wine with his water. Christopher
was doubtful, but he risked it.
The result was disastrous. During the heat of the day they were lying in the shade of the
truck, the two Arshiane asleep, Wanting something from the driver's cabin, he got up to
get it. As he was climbing up he was suddenly overcome by a strange sickness. His head
started to pound, and he found himself shivering violently. He knew he was going to
collapse, so he made a desperate effort to avoid the blazing sand. His fall as he blacked
out, fortunately, woke the other two, and they dragged him completely into the shade.
For an hour he could not speak. His two companions took off their turbans and poured
water on them, using them to rub his body gently in order to keep his temperature
down. When he recovered his senses they gave him as much water as he could drink.
The quality of the water is not the only respect in which In Salah differs em El Goles. The
latter town, with its shady swimming-pools and its luxuriant trees and plants has
triumphed over the barrenness of the desert. In Salah is fighting a desperate battle for
survival, and perhaps losing the contest. The sand is constantly encroaching on the
town.
"Parts of the town are being swallowed by the desert. It is a frightening thing to see.
Man has tried by every means to hold it back, but in spite of his efforts, the desert keeps
tightening its strangle-hold. Palm-trees that once lifted their branches high above the
dunes are now like bushes, and some of them are completely covered. I bent down and
picked dates off some of them. Many people have had to leave their homes. Storm
fences do little, if any. good."
A truck was leaving shortly-a big, dirty, clumsy-looking oil-truck. This time the driver and
greaser seemed reluctant to take him. Although they finally agreed, they did their best
to go without him. It turned out that they believed him to be a French-man, and they
disliked the French. When they found that he was American they became friendly at
once.
It was unbearably stifling in the driver's cabin. Christopher was completely overcome at
one point, and when a midday stop was made at a little mud-building outpost, he
staggered inside, to the astonishment of the French officer quartered there, and lay
down on the floor to be ill. Fortunately, he had recovered by the evening, and was able
to continue the truck journey.
Tamanrasset was reached at last, and here Christopher made one of his most valuable
contacts. This was Professor Claude Balanguernon, a remarkable Frenchman who has
devoted himself to helping the Tuareg people. He succeeded in convincing them that
education would be useful to them. Then most wisely, he adapted himself to their
habits and customs, so that he could help them to get the most from their own natural
way of life, rather than persuade them to adopt Western habits unsuited to their land
and traditions.
Balanguernon acted as Christopher's guide, host, and friend while he was in
Tamanrasset. With his assistance Christopher was able to spend a week in the
encampment of the Tuareg Amenokal (King), an experience which he found fascinating.
The Tuaregs, though their life is primitive, are a people of great dignity, extreme
honesty, high intelligence, and with quite an ancient history. In preparation for this visit
Christopher learnt. to ride a camel, a task which he found more difficult than it looks.
During his first lesson he was thrown over the animal's head three times, and once over
its rear.
It was on this formidable type of transport that he was to continue his Sahara journey.
There were no more trucks.
Balanguernon arranged for one of his most educated pupils, a young Tuareg noble
named Boubaker, to act as guide for the first few days of the 1280 kilometres journey
from Tamanrasset to Timbuktu. The start was made at dawn, Boubaker and Christopher
each on a camel, with a third carrying Christopher's supplies. It would probably be two
or three weeks before the next village was reached, so it was essential for him to take
enough food and drink to last that time. Out in the burning desert there are no villages
to turn to if food runs short.
The most difficult and dangerous stage of the journey now had to be endured. It began
when Christopher was handed over by the leader of a big caravan to a small group who
were willing to go to Kidal, about 560 kilometres from Timbuktu. The little party, two
Tuaregs, a slave, and Christopher, began by setting out to find a well which was on their
route, in order to replenish their water-bags. They reached it at last and it was bone-dry.
There was only one tin of food left in Christopher's pack, and the four of them shared
the beans it contained. His guides carried no food at all, and very little water. By the
time darkness came, Christopher's water-supply was down to one litre. At this point
twenty large vultures were discovered, and these stood watching the travellers with
interest "making up their minds whether they wanted white or dark meat for the meal
they were sure they would soon by eating."
The vultures were to be disappointed. The four men went to sleep early-a desert custom
when travellers are hungry or thirsty-and next morning were still alive. They had just
enough water left to make one cup of tea each and then set off for the next waterhole,
about five hours distant.
When they reached it, just before the hottest part of the day, they found that this too,
like the previous hole, was completely dry. The next waterhole was two days away and
the travellers now had neither food nor water.
The future looked grim.
There was just one chance of survival. One of the six camels could be killed. The
decision was made - Christopher being asked to pay his share of the cost, to which he
willingly agreed. Strangely enough, as soon as a camel was picked for the slaughter it
seemed to know what was to happen and started screaming at the top of its voice.
When the victim was killed, the liquid in its stomach was caught in a water-bag by the
slave. It would be hard to think of a less appetizing drink than the greenish fluid, like
thin blood, produced from this source. Even the Tuaregs made faces as they drank it.
Christopher could not tackle it, parched though he was, until he had boiled it: and even
then he had to hold his nose while he drank it. Somehow he got it down. Together with
the camel's flesh, the unappetizing liquid kept them going for another two days.
The region through which they were passing was known as the Land of Thirst and Death,
and the name was well chosen. It was an area notorious for sandstorms as well as for
dried-up waterholes. Christopher soon experienced one of them. Shortly after the
midday stop on the following day, the camels all instinctively turned off their course to
the right, making for the nearest depression in the waste of sand. The reason presently
became clear to Christopher as he gazed at the horizon.
"It was incredible. The dunes seemed to be on fire, the peaks were melting away and
the whole horizon was changing shape. Then as it started to get dark I heard a sound
like wind blowing through the leaves of a tree."
His companions made signs for him to hide himself behind his camel and cover his head.
He did so, but the force of the storm when it struck was too great to be avoided. "Even
with the camel's body as a shield, I could feel the impact of the wall of sand that came
streaming along the earth. The wind found even the smallest opening in my clothes, and
the sand felt like little needles."
There was nothing he could do but crouch down waiting for the storm to finish, while
the sand steadily piled up on top of him. He found himself recalling a true story that just
such a sandstorm, many years earlier, had completely buried a huge caravan of 1200
camels without leaving a trace of them.
The present storm fortunately was less drastic, and lasted only half an hour. But they all
had seventy five millimeters of sand completely covering them; and it did not need
much imagination to understand how a party could easily be buried and suffocated.
Kidal was the last town on his route before Timbuktu itself, but there were still over 450
kilometres of grim desert to be crossed. This proved to be the loneliest and most
arduous stage of the whole desert crossing.
The stress of desert travel had affected him physically. His hand had become so cracked
that he could hardly use his camera. To add to his troubles, he took his camel one day
across a huge slab of rock on a slight incline. Then he realized that it was covered with
tiny stones. His camel fell heavily, knocking him off its back; and though it was not really
injured, it was so shocked and frightened that he could not ride it for some time, but
had to follow it on foot.
Another little incident served as a reminder that the desert has many ways of destroying
its victims. Christopher was helping to gether stones to place in the fire, for the kettle or
pan to stand on. He picked up one large rock to find a four-foot snake coiled under it. It
uncoiled rapidly and struck, but he managed to jump back just in time to avoid the
deadly fangs. The guide's slave killed it with a stone, indicating by gestures that it was a
very poisonous specimen.
A day later he caught his first glimpse of Timbuktu. He had reached his goal at last and
his journey had taken him across 3200 kilometres of desert.
This was the end of his main journey; but it was by no means the end of his adventures.
The stay in Timbuktu had enabled him to recover some of the weight he had lost in the
desert, and he was beginning to feel fit and well. He experienced a curious longing to
see some more of the strange and mighty desert before leaving the country, perhaps for
good.
A sudden decision was made. He sent a telegram to Professor Claude Balanguernon
in Tamanrasset, and then flew rapidly eastward by plane, partly across the Land of Thirst
and Death across which he had so painfully toiled. From Agades he travelled north to
meet Balanguemon, partly in a hired jeep with a French Lieutenant, partly by camel.
The arrangement was that the Professor would drive south in his jeep from Tamanrasset
to a well at In Abbangarit, where Christopher would wait for him. If Christopher had not
after all reached it by the appointed day, then Balanguemon would continue south on
the primitive road towards Agades.
Unfortunately the caravan with which Christopher was travelling insisted on making a
lengthy detour to water their camels at a well, some distance from the road. The
American insisted on getting back to the road again as soon as possible, expressing
himself vigorously to the leader by signs as they could not speak each other's language.
But by the time they got back to the road two days had been lost.
The caravan presently left the route, but a boy acted as a guide to lead Christopher to
the well at In Abbangarit. It was reached just at nightfall, and the following morning the
boy went back, leaving Christopher alone to await the arrival, as he supposed, of the
Professor from the north.
There is no village at In Abbangarit. The only building is a bordj, which is a simple mud
structure consisting of a roof and four walls, with one hole to serve as a window and
another to serve as a door. The well is about 275 metres away.
When he reached it he had a shock. There was water there all right-but it was a good 46
metres below, and there was neither rope nor bucket!
He returned to the bordj and searched his pack. The only possible container to bring up
the water was a small metal teapot, which would carry about half a cupful of liquid at a
time if a line was tied to the handle and the spout plugged up.
Aline tied to the handle..... but where was the line?
Fastening together all the available bits of cord and articles of clothing he could at first
make only 8 metres. On an inspiration he tore the turban he was wearing into four
strips. Still the teapot reached no more than half-way down the well.
What else? His sleeping-bag? No, for it was now the winter season, which meant that
the nights were bitterly cold, although the days, by normal standards, were still
unbearably hot. Without a sleeping-bag or blanket he would freeze to death.
That night he lay in his sleeping-bag picturing himself dying of thirst and hunger if
the Professor did not arrive in the next day or two.
He had with him a small recording machine. The notion of death suggested to him that
it might be a good idea to record his last thoughts for the benefit of those who found his
body. The set was battery-operated, with thin wire as the recording medium.
Wire!
It dawned on him suddenly that here was the 'rope' he needed to reach the water in the
well. The wire was very thin, little thicker than a human hair, but it was about 305
metres long. By putting several strands together it should be possible to make a line
strong enough to bear the weight of a small teapot half-full of water.
The scheme worked. Seven strands of wire, laboriously twisted together, just reached
comfortably to water-level in the well.
The liquid brought up in the teapot was not particularly inviting - it was like a mixture of
mud and sulphur-but it was drinkable, and it would save him from dying of thirst. He
spent the whole morning drawing up potful after potful, and was able to collect five, 23
litres to take back to the bordj.
The following evening as he sat outside the bordj, staring only half-consciously at the
horizon, he noticed a small sandstorm blowing vaguely in his direction. Could it be the
dust raised by a Car? No, there was too much of it for that.
There was indeed too much dust to be raised by a small jeep; but it was a rescue party
none the less. Two big Desert Patrol cars came roaring up to the bordj; and Death
reluctantly departed.
Claude Balanguernon and a friend arrived a few hours later in the jeep. What had
happened was that they had missed meeting Christopher during the unfortunate two-
day detour. They had later been misdirected by a native who thought Christopher had
returned to Agades. When they reached Agades and discovered the native's error,
Balanguernon realized that Christopher must have missed them on the road, and that
he was probably waiting at In Abbangarit, short of food. He very sensibly got in touch
with the Desert Patrol and they sent out four trucks to cover the desert north from
Agades, and in particular to visit In Abbangarit.
His foresight saved Christopher's life, and enabled the hitch-hiking journey across the
Sahara to end in a return to the Hoggar region instead of in a sandy grave in the heart of
the desert.

13 SIR ALEXANDER FLEMING

Patrick Pringle
Pasteur discovered germs, and Lister killed them. These two men together
revolutionized the theory and practice of medicine.
Louis Pasteur, a French chemist, discovered that disease was caused by living organisms
so small that they could not be seen with the naked eye - micro-organisms, or microbes,
or bacteria, or germs; the words all mean the same thing. Joseph Lister, an English
surgeon-later Lord Lister, the first medical peer-applied Pasteur's discovery to surgery.
Since germs are alive, germs can be killed. They can be destroyed by heat or poisoned
by certain chemicals, called antiseptics; carbolic acid is one, and that was the germ-
killer Lister used. Previously surgeons had, without knowing it, infected their patients on
the operating-table with germs, chiefly from their surgical instruments. Lister sterilized
his instruments with carbolic acid, and used carbolic acid to kill the germs on his hands,
on the patient's skin, and even in the air in the operating-theatre. Then he could cut his
patients open without fear of infecting them with the germs of disease.
Lister's aim was the prevention of disease. The object of his antiseptic method, as it was
called, was to stop germs from getting into the body. The cure of disease was a more
difficult problem, for here the germs were already inside the body. Certainly they could
be killed by the same antiseptic method: but it was soon found that a chemical that
destroyed germs also destroyed the cells of the body. Injecting carbolic acid into the
blood was tried, and quickly abandoned for it did more harm than good. To kill all the
germs the dose would have had to be strong enough to kill the patient, too.
It was a bacteriologist named Metchnikoff, a pupil of Pasteur, who revealed the true
nature of the problem. He discovered the body's natural armour against disease - the
leucocytes, or white cells of the blood. He showed that when germs enter the body they
are immediately attacked by hosts of white cells from the whole neighbourhood, which
rush to join battle with the invader like soldiers answering a bugle-call. He showed that
disease was, in fact, a fight between the leucocytes and the germs-and a fight to the
death, for it ended only with the death of the germs or the death of the patient.
Carbolic acid and all the other known antiseptics did more damage to the leucocytes
than to the germs. The problem was to find something that would attack only the
germs, and to help, not destroy, the fighting leucocytes.
The problem was still unsolved in 1906, when Alexander Fleming passed the finals of his
medical examination and joined the staff of the Inoculation Department of St. Mary's
Hospital, Paddington.
Alexander Fleming was born on a farm near Darvel, in Ayrshire, on August 6, 1881.
He was the youngest of a family of eight. His father died when he was seven years old,
and his eldest brother, Hugh, took over the management of the farm. Alexander was
then still going to the village school. At ten he went to Darvel School, and stayed till he
was twelve. That was the age-limit. The question was then discussed whether he should
continue his education or go back to the land. It was decided to keep him at school, and
he went to Kilmarnock Academy. At fourteen he went to London, and for the next two
years he studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic.
Three of his brothers were already in London when he arrived. One of them, Thomas,
had studied medicine at Glasgow University, and was a qualified oculist. Two others
became opticians. And back in Scotland one of his sisters married a Darvel doctor, and
another a veterinary surgeon. The Flemings, born on the land, were becoming a medical
family. But when Alexander left the Polytechnic, at sixteen, he was to take a job as a
clerk in a shipping firm in Leaden-hall Street. There was not enough money for him to
study for a profession or trade.
Fleming worked in Leaden-hall Street for four years. Then, at twenty, he received a share
in a legacy. It was not large, but enough for him to train for a career with better
prospects. His brother Thomas was then in Harley Street; and according to Fleming
himself, "My brother Thomas pushed me into medicine."
There were twelve medical schools in London, and Fleming knew nothing about any of
them. He chose St. Mary's for no better reason than that he had played water-polo
against the Hospital team.
For eight years Fleming worked in Wright's laboratory; for eight years he sought to find a
means to aid the leucocytes in their fight against invading bacteria. Then, in 1914, he
joined the R.A.M.C., and came face to face with one of the main medical problems of
the First World War: the treatment of infected wounds.
By 1914 Lister's antiseptic method of surgery had been largely replaced by what was
called the aseptic method. Instead of chemicals heat was used to sterilize instruments,
clothing and other operating-theatre equipment. The purpose was the same, to prevent
germs from getting into the wound. In peace-time this was adequate for most surgical
cases; but in the treatment of war wounds prevention was not enough. In nearly every
case the wound was infected before treatment could be begun. Thus the surgeon's
problem was the same as that of a physician treating disease: he had to try to kill the
germs without damaging the leucocytes that were already fighting against them.
There was no solution-and the problem was tremendous. For the first time in warfare
high explosives were used extensively, and wounds that were not infected were rare
indeed. The surgeons were unprepared. Thanks to the antiseptic and aseptic methods,
infection in surgical cases had become the exception instead of the rule; now it was the
other way about gain "We have in this war gone back to all the septic infections of the
Middle Ages", said the Director General of the Army Medical Service.
Medical officers treated infected wounds by the only method they knew, with chemical
antiseptics. They applied carbolic acid, iodine, and other chemicals to open wounds in
an attempt to destroy as many germs as possible. They could not destroy all the germs,
but thought that if only some were killed it would be better than none.
Meanwhile Fleming, a medical officer himself, was still working with his old chief. Sir
Almroth Wright had been made a Colonel in the Army Medical Service, and had set up a
research laboratory at Boulogne. There, with the help of Fleming, he set to work to
tackle the problem of wound infection.
Wright and Fleming discovered that the treatment being used was doing more harm
than good. Each of the chemical antiseptics was more harmful to the leucocytes than to
the germs: and in some cases the antiseptic actually helped the germs to grow and
multiply. And Wright and Fleming both insisted that the method was basically wrong-
that the surgeon's aim should be not so much to kill the germs with an outside agent as
to help the leucocytes do their natural germ-killing work.
Experiments were made with different chemicals, and one after another became
fashionable and then gave way to the next. And at the end of the War, which had killed
about seven million men, the problem was still unsolved.
Fleming, now thirty-seven, went back to St. Mary's and continued research. And in 1922
he discovered an antiseptic-not a chemical like carbolic acid, but a natural antiseptic
manufactured by the body.
He made the discovery by what he modestly called an accident. He was suffering from
catarrh, and began to examine his own nasal secretions. In these secretions he
discovered a substance that destroyed microbes on the culture plate. He called it
lysozyme.
Lysozyme proved to be of little practical use in the treatment of disease, but the
discovery was of considerable importance: for it was the forerunner of penicillin.
Lysozyme was not a chemical but a natural antiseptic; and unlike chemical antiseptics, it
destroyed germs and yet had no harmful effect on the leucocytes. It was, in fact, the
first antiseptic discovered that was harmless to the cells of the body.
Penicillin was the second.
The discovery of lysozyme did not bring Fleming popular fame, but it raised his position
in the world of science. The medical profession began to pay more attention to what he
said: and at this time he had quite a lot to say on the subject that had occupied his mind
ever since the First World War. Chemical antiseptics were fashionable again, and
Fleming once more reminded doctors of the greater importance of the natural defences
of the body.
In 1928 Fleming was appointed Professor of Bacteriology in the University of London
and in the same year he "hit on" penicillin. The phrase in his own. "The very first stage in
the discovery," he says, "was due to a stroke of good fortune." But only the first
stage.
In his laboratory at St. Mary's he was carrying out a series of experiments on the
common germ called staphylococcus. He was growing colonies of the germs on plates
spread with agar. The plates were kept covered, but to examine them under a micro-
scope he had to take the covers off. "As soon as you open a culture plate," he said
afterwards, "you are asking for trouble. Things drop from the air. One of those bits of
trouble happened to be penicillin. Amould spore, coming from I don't know where,
dropped on the plate."
Presumably the spore of the mould, or fungus, was blown in through the window. It
may have come from the larder of a forgetful Paddington housewife for this particular
mould commonly breeds on damp bread, cheese, and preserves. It grows best when the
conditions are cool and damp and the summer of 1928 was very cool and damp.
Having settled on the culture plate, the mould began to grow. And almost at once the
microbes round it began to disappear.
Fleming put aside the work he was doing and began to investigate. He made a pure
culture of the mould, and tried its effect on other bacteria. Some grew right up to it;
others, like the staphylococci, stopped short, inhibited by its antibacterial action.
The next step was to produce the anti-bacterial substance free of the mould. Fleming
did this by plating the mould on a meat broth. It grew on the surface as a felt-like mass,
and turned the broth yellow, After a week's growth the fluid was strained through a fine
filter and tested for its anti-bacterial properties, The results were as favourable as
before, and Fleming knew that he had discovered another natural antiseptic with far
greater possibilities than lysozyme. He called it penicillin.
Further experiments showed that, in its effects on germs like staphylococci, penicillin
was about three times as strong as carbolic acid and all the other chemical antiseptics, it
had no toxic effect at all on leucocytes. Theoretically it looked like an ideal germ-killer-
the antiseptic that had been sought ever since Pasteur discovered germs. In practice
there was one big obstacle: in its crude form penicillin was unstable, and it could not be
used in the treatment of disease until a means was found of concentrating it.
That was a chemist's job, and Fleming was a bacteriologist. He tried to concentrate the
drug, but failed. He lacked both the training and the equipment needed for the job. He
published his findings, and continued to proclaim his faith in penicillin; and he kept his
original culture of the mould. It can be seen today, dried up but still recognizable, in a
place of honour in the Museum of the Medical School of St. Mary's Hospital.
So it seemed that penicillin was, like lysozyme, just another laboratory success. And
regretfully Fleming turned to other things.
Meanwhile a fresh attempt had been begun to solve the problem of concentrating
penicillin. It was made at Oxford by a team headed by Professor (now Sir) Howard Florey
and Dr. E. B. Chain.
The Oxford team included trained chemists as well as bacteriologists, and had all the
equipment that Fleming had lacked; yet it was a long, hard struggle before they
succeeded in producing a practical concentration of penicillin. The first human cases
were treated in 1941, and the problem then became a matter of production. One of the
Oxford team went to America, where new methods of manufacture were discovered,
and in 1943 penicillin reached the Eighth Army in Egypt. In the words of Viscount
Montgomery of Alamein, "The healing of war wounds was revolutionized." Penicillin
arrived just in time to save countless lives. It was easily the strongest weapon yet forged
in the fight against disease.
While penicillin was being hailed as a wonder drug, the name of its discoverer was
hardly known outside the medical profession. Then Sir Almroth Wright wrote a letter to,
"The Times' telling the world who had made the discovery. And Fleming became
famous.
He was knighted in 1944, and awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1945.
Government and universities all over the world showered him with honours. He had to
travel widely, attend functions, make speeches, received thanks-often personal
expressions of gratitude from people who owed their lives to his discovery. In Italy once,
at a medical gathering, an unknown man in short-sleeves pushed himself and his three
children forward to reach Fleming. "If these children are alive," He said, "they owe it to
you." Then, pointing to Fleming, he told his children, "Never forget to ask God in your
prayer to bless this man." But Fleming protested that such gratitude was not due to him.
"Everywhere I go people thank me for saving their lives," he said, "I don't know why
they do it. I didn't do anything; Nature makes penicillin. I just found it." It was not just
modesty that made him say this. It was a restatement of his belief in the healing power
of Nature. He protested vigorously against the idea that penicillin was a man-made
invention. 'I have been accused of inventing penicillin, but no man could have done that.
Nature, in the form of a lowly vegetable, has been making it for thousands of years. I
only discovered it." And always he insisted that he discovered it by chance.
"Happy is he who already belonged to history in his own life-time," said Lord Moran,
referring to Fleming, but Fleming was not happy in the limelight. "I am a simple
bacteriologist," he said; and as soon as he could slip away he went back to his laboratory
at St. Mary's and got back to work.
The Americans visited the laboratory and were amazed. One said it was "like the
backroom of an old-fashioned drug store." He found it hard to believe that penicillin
could have been discovered there. Fleming laughed, and in Detroit, where he was
shown over the last word in research laboratories- a gleaming, dustless, air-conditioned,
sterilized sanctum-he shocked his hosts by saying, "Wonderful, but penicillin could never
have been discovered in a lab like this." When they saw the point they could not deny it.
Their culture plates were never contaminated, for the air was too pure: there was no
way in for spores of a common mould.
Fleming's achievement was not only the discovery of penicillin. As the Surgeon- General
of the United States Forces said, "Fleming, like Pasteur, has opened up a whole new
world of science." He founded the antibiotic- that is, growth inhibiting treatment of
disease. He provoked others to seek new antibiotics, and all research-workers to be on
the lookout for them, particularly in moulds and fungi; and out of these researches,
which but for Fleming would not have been started came new drugs, made by nature
and at last discovered by man, of which the best known at present is streptomycin.
Fleming himself regarded this as the most important result of his work. Even before
penicillin was in general use, he said, "The greatest benefit penicillin has conferred is not
to the drug itself but the fact that its discovery has stimulated new research to find
something better."
Sir Alexander Fleming died in 1955 at the age of seventy-three. His work will never die.

Margaret A
Pasteur was born in quite humble circumstances, at Dole in the Jura district of France in
1822. His father as a young man had been one of Napoleon's conscripts and had won
the Cross of the Legion of Honour on the field of battle, for valour and fidelity. Thus the
son was fortunate in possessing forbears of character and strength. There is much
evidence of the influence of the father on the son, Pasteur showing time after time the
strength of his devotion to France. He was perhaps even more of a patriot than of a
scientist, e.g., in 1848, when Europe was politically upheaved, Pasteur enrolled himself
in the National Guard and seeing one day in the Place due Pantheon, a sort of altar
labeled "autel de la patrie" promptly placed on it all his worldly wealth-150 francs.
Again, in 1870 he was returning from Germany to France, and at Strasburg, heard that
France was on the verge of war with Germany whereupon he hurried to Paris and was
exceedingly disappointed when the military authorities refused to enrol him in the
National Guard-on the score that a half paralysed man was useless in the army. (He had
a paralytic stroke two years before, in 1868, and never shook off the physical effects,
though after two years he was able to continue his mental work as well as ever before.)
However, to return to his boyhood - when he was two years old the family moved from
Dole to Arbois, where his father bought a small tannery, and here Pasteur was sent to
school at the Communal College where at first he showed no interest whatever in books
or study but devoted his attention to fishing and making sketches of his companions.
However directly he grasped the fact that his education was a great drain on the family
funds, he set himself in earnest at school and soon developed the passion for work
which marked the whole of the rest of his life.
The College at Arbois did not teach philosophy and so, after a time, Pasteur went on to
Besancon, a bigger place, with better educational provision. Here he graduated in
Science and Arts and was given a post on the College Staff.
He was already much interested in Chemistry-too much so for the professor of that
subject at Besancon, whom Pasteur used to embarrass with unanswerable questions.
The Professor in question disapproved of saying "I don't know"-and used to try to keep
Pasteur "in his place" by telling him that questions were to be asked by the Teacher of
the Scholar and not vice versa.
In 1842, i.e., when he was twenty, he went in for the entrance examination to the great
Ecole Normale in Paris and came out fourteenth on the list, whereupon he refused to
enter, being so disappointed at not getting a higher place. He took the examination
again in the following year and was fourth on the list, which apparently more or less
satisfied him.
At this point one may say a word about his private affairs. In 1848, at the age of twenty-
six he became Deputy Professor of Chemistry in the University of Strasburg, and here he
met his future wife, who was the daughter of the Rector of the Strasburg Academy. They
were married in 1850, and it seems that Pasteur was so buried in his work on the
wedding day that he entirely forgot the ceremony and had to be fetched by a friend. The
marriage, however, was extremely happy, and the wife seems to have been an
important factor in her husband's work.
In 1860, the French Academy offered a prize for the solution of the problem whether
spontaneous generation was or was not a fact, and Pasteur entered for the competition,
and settled the matter once and for all in the negative, proving that if a substance be
sufficiently heated to destroy all life and if the air in contact with it be filtered, so that it
is free of germs, then the substance does not alter, i.e., bacteria do not develop in it. As
usual, his opponents said they had obtained opposite results, so Pasteur asked for
arbitration, and the Academy appointed a Commission, before which Pasteur and his
adversaries were to repeat their experiments. On the appointment day. Pasteur
appeared loaded with apparatus. His opponents, however, had none; they said the
weather was unfavourable and they would like to wait. The Commission very reasonably
refused; Pasteur did his experiment successfully and won the prize. In the course of
these experiments Pasteur found that some germs are very difficult to destroy by heat;
e.g., milk developed bacteria even after several minutes' boiling. but after raising the
temperature 10°C above boiling point, he found that no bacteria were left alive. This
work on spontaneous generation was of great value because it stimulated other
scientists to study the habits of germs, and much of our modern knowledge of these
invisible but very active plants sprang from Pasteur's discoveries.
This brings us on to 1870, when France and Germany were plunged into war, and
Pasteur ever intensely a lover of France, was filled with sorrow and anxiety, and with
loathing of Germany, he wrote to the University of Bonn, which had bestowed on him
the degree of Doctor of Medicine, asking that his name should be removed from the
Faculty of the University, and returning his diploma, of which he speaks thus:-
"Today the sight of this parchment is odious to me, and I feel offended at seeing my
name.... Placed under the patronage of a name doomed henceforward to execration by
my country, that of Rex Guilelmus......"
Having offered himself as a soldier where now he was refused on the score of physical
incapacity, this unconquerable man turned to the sword of Science and took up the
study of brewing, in order to discover a method whereby France might produce beer as
good as that manufactured in Germany. He imparted his discoveries to the English
brewers as well as to the French, with the rather illuminating remark, "We must make
some friends for our beloved France." In 1876 this work was published in a book called
"Etudes sur la Biere," which has been translated into English and is the best known of
Pasteur's books in England, where it has been of tremendous value in the brewing
industry. Huxley once said that Pasteur's work on fermentation alone saved France more
than enough to pay the Indemnity of the Franco-German War.
However, Pasteur's work on fermentation did not stop short here; it had far more
important effects on medicine, surgery, and public health, for it was the staring-point for
Lord Lister's work on inflammation of wounds, which in those days caused endless
trouble after operations, often making amputation necessary and frequently even this
was not enough to save the patient's life. About 33% of deaths from major operations
occurred in pre- Listerian days, with the result that surgeons were unwilling to operate
except as a last and desperate resort.
Now Pasteur's discovery that fermentation was due to bacteria set Lister wondering
whether inflammation was not also a type of fermentation due to bacteria getting into
the wound. And as the result of a series of brilliant researches he proved that this was
so, and that, if only germs were excluded from wounds, inflammation was averted.
The antiseptic method in surgery has led on to the aseptic method of today, where the
ideal is to keep the patient's skin free from germs, so that the living tissues need not be
soaked in carbolic, which tends to destroy the tissue as well as the germ. Hence though
the instruments and the doctor's hands and everything else are rigorously disinfected,
the wound is not thus treated, unless it be an old wound, already infected. The
enormous value of this work is shown by the fact that the death-rate today in major
operations has fallen to about 1%.
To return to Pasteur-the achievement by which he is best known to the man in the
street, viz., his work on disease, was led up to by an investigation into which he was
almost forced by the French Government. This was the result of a mysterious epidemic
of silkworm diseases which for fifteen or sixteen years had been devastating the silk-
industry in the South of France. Now, the keeping of silkworms was one of the chief
home-industries of the peasantry of the part of France. Practically every family set aside
the best room in the house for the rearing and tending of silkworms: the women got up
even during the night to supply the worms with fresh mulberry leaves and to see that
the temperature of the room was just right; and in that region the common greeting on
meeting a friend is said to be not "How do you do?" but "How are your silkworms
doing?"
Until 1849 the industry had flourished consistently, but in 1849 the moths were attacked
by disease. It was thought at first that the eggs were a fault, and fresh ones were
brought from other countries and for one season, this cured the disease; but it
reappeared in the first generation of descendants of these imported worms, and so the
inhabitants were driven to import fresh eggs each year. Soon, however, the disease
spread to neighbouring countries, until Japan was the only silk-producing country free
from the disease. This reduced the silk growers to despair, thousands of families were
faced with ruin, and things were so serious that in 1865 the Government asked Pasteur
to investigate the disease. At first he refused, on the ground that he was a chemist and
not a naturalist and had never touched a silkworm in his life, but he pleaded ignorance
in vain. "So much the better," replied M. Dumas, who bore the message from the
Government, "you will only have the ideas which come to you from your own
observation." This coupled with his sympathy for the people of the devastated region,
overcame his reluctance, and he set out for Alais, a town in the silk district.
Now earlier observers had noted microscopic grains or "corpuscles" in the bodies of the
diseased worms, but nobody had succeeded in finding a remedy, until Pasteur
suggested collecting the eggs, laid by each moth separately and only keeping those
derived from healthy parents. The only way in which this could be done was by use of
the microscope, and Pasteur realized that this instrument would be a strange and
terrifying thing to the peasants, so he tried to reassure them by telling them that this
little girl of eight years old was quite at home with it. In addition, he directed the
silkworm rearers' attention to the need of avoiding over-crowding, un-cleanliness, over-
heating, and unhealthy conditions generally, since these weakened the insects and
made them more liable to the disease.
This treatment, though it was not at once adopted, was very successful in decreasing
the epidemic. It has been estimated that before Pasteur came to the rescue, France had
lost forty million francs through silkworm disease. An even more important result of this
work was that it led Pasteur on to study the infectious diseases of the higher animals,
including Man.
It was during his work on the silkworm that Pasteur suffered from a stroke, the physical
effects of which he never shook off. It has been attributed to overwork on the silk
problem. Providentially, however, his mind was not injured, and in 1877, at the age of
fifty- five he began to study the cattle-disease named Anthrax. It had already been
suggested that this was due to a germ, and Pasteur finally proved the truth of this
theory and, further worked out preventive treatment. He cultivated the anthrax bacillus
in such a way that it became only mildly poisonous and proved that these weakened
germs introduced into an animal's blood gave rise to only slight symptoms of anthrax
and protected the animal from taking the deadly form, much in the same way as
vaccination prevents smallpox. This protective treatment has safeguarded millions of
sheep and cattle from the disease. Reports from France and Hungary show that on many
farms the death-rate from anthrax has fallen from 10% to 1% amongst sheep and from
5% to less than 1% among cattle.
And this brings us to the next stage of Pasteur's work that on human diseases.
Overcoming his dislike of seeing suffering, he visited hospitals, collecting infectious
matter from patients, examining it microscopically and identifying the germs associated
with various diseases, e.g., at the time the Maternity Hospitals were devastated by
puerperal fever in every country, and an appalling number of women died from the
disease. Pasteur discovered its germ, and an interesting little episode is recorded by M.
Roux in connection with the discovery. "One day, at a discussion on puerperal fever
which was taking place at the Academy of Medicine, while one of the most
distinguished authorities was eloquently descanting on the causes of epidemics of this
disease at Maternity Hospitals, he was suddenly interrupted by Pasteur as follows:- "It is
nothing of all that which causes the epidemic; it is the doctor and his belongings which
carry the germs from diseased to the healthy woman.' And when the speaker replied
(with the superiority which we can all imagine) that he was afraid they would never
discover that microbe, Pasteur rushed to the black-board and drew the germ, saying,
"Stop, here is its picture." Nowadays, thanks to Pasteur and Lister, epidemics of this
disease in Maternity Hospitals are unknown.
We now come to how he discovered the method of making vaccines, i.e., weakened
germs, which can be inoculated in measured quantities into human beings as a cure or
preventive of the disease caused by the ordinary un-weakened germ.
He had gone away from his laboratory for a holiday, in 1879, whilst working at fowl-
cholera, and on his return found all his cultivations of the germs dead or dying. He
proceeded in inoculate various birds with those dead or dying germs and found that the
birds showed signs of illness but recovered. The idea then occurred to him of inoculating
them with a fresh lot of virulent germs of chicken-cholera, and he was amazed at the
result, viz., that the birds still resisted the disease, though others, which had not been
previously dosed with the exhausted germs died. So he arrived at the method of
attenuating germs, i.e., of cultivating them so that they were weakened, and also at the
fact that such germs inoculated into a healthy animal produced a mild type of illness
which protected the animal from attack by the virulent form of the disease.
The first human disease to which Pasteur applied inoculation was Hydrophobia or
Rabies, the horrible illness produced by the bite of a "Mad" dog. To give one some idea
of its horrors, one need only read such descriptions as the following, of a child of five,
admitted to a French Hospital. "The unfortunate little patient presented all the
characteristics of hydrophobia: spasms, restlessness, shudders at the least breath of air,
an ardent thirst, accompanied with an absolute impossibility of swallowing, convulsive
movements, fits of furious rage. The child died after twenty-four hours of horrible
suffering suffocated by the mucus which filled the mouth." As a matter of fact, its germ
has never been found, but it was known that the part of the body affected in
hydrophobia was the nervous tissue, and Pasteur tried taking some of the nervous
tissue of an animal which had died of the disease and attenuating it, which he found
could be done by exposing the spinal cord of rabid rabbits to dry air, which weakened it
until after fourteen days it was harmless. The attenuated spinal cord introduced into
dogs rendered them immune to hydrophobia, but the treatment was not tried on
human beings till 1885, when a boy, Joseph Meister, was brought to Paris for treatment
from a little place in Alsace. He had been bitten by a mad dog two days before.
Now, human beings do not as a rule develop hydrophobia for a month or so after being
bitten, and Pasteur, being as usual extremely anxious to ward off suffering, undertook
the treatment of the boy by inoculations, which were continued for ten days.
Meanwhile the boy was hardly ill at all and played about the laboratory very happily,
though Pasteur was devoured by fears and anxiety about the results. However, the boy
was absolutely cured, and two months later a shepherd, who had been bitten by a mad
dog, was similarly cured, and three months later three hundred and fifty cases had been
treated, with only one death. By 1899, more than twenty-three thousand people had
undergone the treatment, and the number today must be larger still. The deaths
amongst these were less than % %, and there is no doubt that many of the rest were
saved from a terrible death by Pasteur's work.
But though this was the last of Pasteur's great discoveries, its results were by no means
confined to the cure of hydrophobia, for the fame of his success stirred up other
scientists to try similar between 1880 and 1890 they discovered the germs of
consumption, diphtheria, typhoid, lock-jaw, cholera, and Malta fever.
In 1893 the antitoxin which cures diphtheria was discovered, and also the protective
treatment for cholera. Before the discovery of the antitoxin 30.4% of diphtheria patients
died; now 8.3% die. In 1894-95 the germs of plague and of the tsetse-fly disease in
animals were found. In 1896-97 the protective inoculation treatments for typhoid and
plague were discovered with the result that in Great War there was extraordinarily little
typhoid in our Army compared with the amount of the disease which had occurred in
earlier campaigns, such as the Boer War. In India during 1913, 93% of the British
garrison were inoculated, and deaths from typhoid fell from usual 300-600 to only 20.
In 1898-1900 it was proved that malaria and yellow fever were conveyed by mosquitoes.
Now malaria each year kills millions of men and weakens millions more. It was rampant
in England, under the name of ague till comparatively recently, it was banished by
draining the malarial districts. Now that we know the cause of the disease we can fight
it in two ways by destroying the breeding-places of the mosquito and by protecting man
from the bite of the mosquito. Thus, every puddle of standing water, every pond, etc.,
should be drained or oiled, and all cisterns and wells should be kept closed in a malarial
district, for the mosquito lays its eggs in water. Windows and doors must have wire-
gauze shutters. Beds must be protected by mosquito nets. Finally, quinine is invaluable
as a preventative and cure. It was this knowledge that enabled the Americans to
construct the Panama canal, after the French had failed hopelessly with enormous loss
of life and money owing to the ravages of malaria and yellow fever.
In 1903-05 Bruce showed that sleeping-sickness, which devastates Central Africa, was
conveyed by a species of tsetse-fly. In 1905 in Uganda it caused 8,003 deaths. In 1910
the number was reduced to 1,546.
It is impossible even to catalogue the list of the medical discoveries which have sprung
from Pasteur's work and especially since the Great World War, which forced us to deal
with many hitherto little-known diseases and conditions and so to greatly increase our
knowledge of them. For example, at the beginning of War tetanus (lock-jaw) was
tremendously common amongst our wounded because the soil of Belgium and
Northern France is full of the germs of the disease: hence arose the custom of giving
every wounded man a dose of anti-tetanus serum, which reduced the number of cases
of tetanus to a tiny proportion.
As an expression of world gratitude, the Pasteur Institute was built in Paris with
subscriptions which came from all parts of the world. It was opened in 1888, and was
the joy of Pasteur's few remaining years.
It had been well said that Pasteur "brought the facts of disease and death from the
realm of the supernatural and miraculous into the realm of the natural. Disease and
death were the great mysteries, where the occult held sway. The malign and mysterious
influence of the moon caused lunacy: there was the evil eye with its morbific powers; in
fever and in epilepsy the body was possessed by demons; tuberculosis was the King's
Evil, to be cured by the "Sovereign touch." Far more than all other men, Pasteur
abolished for ever these superstitions."
Pasteur died in 1895, at the age of seventy-three, and was buried in the Institute.

MUSTAFA KAMAL
Wilfrid F. Castle
The war was over. Throughout the entire Near and Middle East the armies of the
democracies had been hailed not so much as conquerors, but as deliverers. The Turks
themselves were only too glad to be able to lay down arms after almost continuous
fighting since 1911. A govemment formed from the old Liberals was in power in
Istanbul, its members and the Padishah himself alike eager to collaborate with the Allies,
their conception of the best interests of the nation was that of loyalty to the Armistice
and co- operation with the occupying forces of the conquerors. At Istanbul the old
British Embassy was now the British High Commission, supported by military and naval
detachments. Allied officers were supervising the police and the ports and the normal
machinery of the government was practically superseded by orders and suggestions
from the Allies.
At this time far away in Eastern Anatolia, one Kiyazim Karabekar with some undefeated
remnants of the Ottoman Army, began to obstruct the Allied control officers, refusing to
disband his men. Week by week little encounters increased; it was apparent that the
Turks were steadily growing bolder. Even in the streets of Anatolia towns their bearing
changed. This caused consternation not only among the Allies but in Istanbul itself.
Some one must go as the representative of the Padishah and deal with the situation on
the spot-a strong capable soldier was wanted. Every indication seemed to point to one
man as being suitable for the work, and Mustafa Kamal was the man. At first the British
High Commissioner demurred, but his objections were for once overruled, and Mustafa
Kamal sailed on the 15" of May, 1919, for the north-east coast of Anatolia as Governor-
General of the Eastern Provinces. Scarcely had the small steamer bearing Mustafa Kamal
entered the Black Sea than the authorities of Istanbul became suspicious of his
intentions and issued orders for the ship to be intercepted. But it was too late.
The very same day it became clear beyond all doubt that the Allies had condemned the
Ottoman Empire to be partitioned to the very walls of Istanbul. On the 15" of May, the
Admiral of the British Mediterranean Fleet informed the Ottoman governor of Izmir that
this great seaport and the rich province of Aydin were to be occupied by the Greeks. The
Ottoman troops were hurriedly withdrawn into barracks and the Greek Metropolitan
raised the Cross as the first Greek soldiers disembarked.
To all Turkish patriots these events meant that there was only one policy to be pursued.
Even those most friendly to the Allies were infuriated by this foreign occupation of the
richest and most essentially Turkish of their provinces. Turkish patriotism was no longer
vague and undecided, it was a flame burning in the hearts of men and women of all
classes-a flame of indignation not of hatred. Even during cruel wars the Turks and the
Greeks never hated each other, and among the Greeks there was little enthusiasm for
the Anatolian adventure. A magnificent Greek Royalist officer-Ioanne Metacas-protested
strongly to his Government, but the invasion continued.
In a heavy storm Mustafa Kamal's small ship staggered towards the landing stage at
Samsun on the coast of Anatolia. At Amisa he met Ali Faut, the commander of a small
army corps centred on Ankara, and at a secret meeting of the patriots he sketched out
his plan of resistance. First of all, guerilla bands must hold up the Greeks, and covered
by these irregulars the patriots must build up the National army, but without any help
from Mehmet IV or any one at Istanbul. "As the Sultan and the Central Government are
in enemy hands we must set up some temporary govemment in Anatolia," he
continued, "A congress of delegates to represent the real, free Turkey should be called
as quickly as possible." Meanwhile Mustafa Kamal set out to tour the villages, preaching
resistance and in every place appointing representatives to form centres of patriotic
revolt. Yet even the energy and personality of Mustafa Kamal would not have been so
effective had not news arrived that the Greeks were advancing. Everywhere the local
Turks vowed that death was preferable to rule by Greeks. Moreover, the Allies who had
made these plans were far away while near at hand was an un-disbanded Turkish army
corps at Diyarbekir. Men came crowding back to the ranks with guns and ammunition
raided from the Allied arms dumps.
As soon as Mehmet heard of these activities he ordered Mustafa Kamal to return. The
patriot's reply was a long personal telegram to the Padishah urging him, as leader of his
people, to come over to Anatolia and himself take the lead against the Greeks and all
the foreign enemies-it would be Mehmet's last chance to save himself, the Throne of his
fore- fathers and the Turkish nation. But Mehmet's conception of the best interests of
Turkey was co-operation with the powerful conquerors. In these circumstances the only
imaginable reply to Mustafa Kamal's invitation was a peremptory command: the rebel
must report himself immediately to Istanbul. Back along the wire went the most
momentous telegram in the history of the Ottoman Empire:
I shall stay in Anatolia until the nation has won its Independence.
Mehmet IV could see no other way to regain the provinces of Anatolia for the throne
than by subtlety. With a sudden movement he unexpectedly proclaimed himself willing
to summon a government pleasing to the Nationalists. The delegates in Anatolia could
transfer their activities to Istanbul, put Mustafa Kamal's ideas into practice and yet no
longer stand in opposition to the Padishah, the Shadow of God. The patriots, who could
scarcely imagine their state without a Sultan as its head sooner or later, grasped at these
promises-almost all but Mustafa Kamal himself who fought hard for a parliament in
Anatolia. He suggested that it should sit in the upland town of Ankara, where it would
be centrally situated, well protected, free, absolutely independent of the Allies in a
thoroughly Turkish town associated with the history of the Turks and their forefathers.
But for once he was defeated and Mustafa Kamal was left almost alone when on the 19"
of January, 1920, the National Assembly assembled in the "City of the Sultan" and began
the hopeless task of trying to work up resistance under the very eyes-and guns-of the
Allies.
While the delegates were wasting their time on the Bosphorus, Mustafa Kamal was
making exceptionally good use of the freedom which the absence of the talkers had
given him. For the next few weeks Allied agents were kept busy reporting large armed
formations seen in the interior: regular troops of the old Imperial army, armed peasants,
women transporting ammunitions and supplies as Turkish women had done in the days
before Islam. The position was becoming really serious for the Allied Army of
Occupation stationed here and there near the coast. In her diary, an American medical
practitioner chronicled the daily deterioration of the position in Anatolia:
"The firing gets worse steadily... a general massacre of the Armenians is expected .... All
night along the skies are red-lighted in every direction by the raging fires, and the
canons roar and the heavens shake.... The whole city is overhung with clouds of smoke.
The Turks are bolder all the time. Surely this is because they realize that this is the end
for them, and are desperate."
Every day brought fresh men and new equipment. The Allies began to withdraw their
troops from the interior. They evacuated the important Baghdad Railway junction at
Estishchir, where immediately the patriots transformed the railway depots into
ammunition factories. The Allies replied by putting Istanbul under a collective arrest and
dissolving "the National Assembly." Leading Patriots hid or escaped into Anatolia, where
they made straight for Ankara to join Mustafa Kamal. There on the 23" of April, 1920 the
revolutionary Turkish Grand National Assembly met with Mustafa Kamal as President. Its
first act was to make clear to the world the position of the new Turkish Government.
The courage of its words is astonishing.
"The Grand National Assembly sitting in Ankara will preside over the destiny of Turkey as
long as the capital is in the hands of the foreigners. It has appointed an Executive
Council, which has taken in hand the government of the country, Istanbul, the Sultan,
and the Government being in the hands of the enemy, all orders from there are
automatically null and void. The nation's rights have been violated. The Turkish nation,
though calm, is determined to maintain its rights as a sovereign independent state."
At last as the month of May, 1920 was drawing to its close the Allies published the terms
of peace which they were willing to make with Mehmet IV. A small and helpless
Ottoman Empire was to be entirely under the supervision of the Allied powers; all the
Arab provinces were to become Mandated Territories; the whole of Eastern Anatolia
was to be added to the state of Armenia; around Izmir was to be a large Greek district;
Cicilia was to go to the French; the Ottoman capital itself was to be an international
centre under the control of Britain, France and Italy. Only the immediate hinterland of
Istanbul was to remain of the once extensive "Turkey in Europe."
The terms if widely accepted would have been the death sentence not only of the
Ottoman Empire but of what was now correctly described as Turkey. By entertaining the
very idea of signing a treaty based on such terms, the Ottoman Government at Istanbul
was branded by the patriots as a puppet government of traitors and dotards, and almost
the entire Turkish nation accepted the Turkish government at Ankara.
There was no one to enforce the terms of the treaty, in the event of Mehmet signing it.
On the 21" August, 1921, the Greeks attacked. In the mountain country above the
Sakarya river, some fifty kilometres west of Ankara the two valiant people fought almost
man to man for fourteen days under the burning heat of the sun, the Greeks attacking
with reckless abandon, the Turks hanging grimly on the heights, Mustafa Kamal now
their Commander- in-Chief. By the 4" of September the critical moment had come: the
Greeks were at the end of their strength. On the 12 they crossed the Sakarya and began
to retire steadily, but there was no question of the Turks immediately following up their
advantage. It was not till the end of August, 1922 that Mustafa Kamal was able to sound
his famous battle-call: "Soldiers: Your goal is the Mediterranean. Forward."
Six days later the advance guard of Turkish National forces drew within sight of the
Mediterranean. There lay Izmir crowded, and overflowing with refugees. There were
ships for the Greek soldiers but none for the Greek and Armenian population, crazed
with fear. In the harbour towered the Allied battleships, powerless to do anything except
to take away as many refugees on board as possible. The Greeks alone were at war with
the "rebel" Turks.
A long line of decorated cars entered Izmir on the 9 of September, 1922, on the either
side an escort of cavalry. In the leading car was Mustafa Kamal, Commander-in-Chief of
the Free-Turkish Forces and "Saviour of Turkey." Three days after the change of
government, fire broke out in several parts of the city at once and the greater part of
Izmir was reduced to ashes.
Mustafa Kamal now realized that he must at last persuade the Ankara Government to
make an end of the puppet show in the old capital. He proposed that the Sultanate
should be abolished. The Grand Turkish National Assembly gave the verdict:
"By the Unanimous Vote of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the
Sultanate is abolished."
On the 4 of November, 1922, Riffat carried out a coup d'etat at Istanbul. On the
following day the Ottonian cabinet resigned office and was not replaced.
For a few days Mehmet stood his ground-the ruler of a palace and a private park. He felt
he could trust no one but an old conductor of the royal orchestra, whom at last he sent
to Sir Charles Harrington to crave British protection for "the Emperor of powerful
Emperors, Refuge of Sovereigns, Distributor of Crowns to the Kings of the Earth, Master
of Europe, Asia and Africa, High King of the Two Seas...."
It was the 17" of November, 1922. A British motor ambulance drew up at a side-door of
the palace where Mehmet was staying. Some baggage was brought out of the palace
and placed in the car. An elderly man followed. A British Officer took the old
gentleman's umbrella as he entered the vehicle. The door was closed and the
ambulance drove away. The last of the Sultans his way to exile. A greater Sovereign than
all the Ottoman Sultans was now in the seat of power at Ankara- the will of the Turkish
people expressed through a leader who was at one and the same time both dictator and
democrat.
It was the end of an age. On the 29" October, 1923, the name of the Ottoman Empire
was wiped from the slate of history. A salute of a hundred and one guns proclaimed the
foundation of the Turkish Republic with Mustafa Kamal as the President and General
Ismat Inonu as the Prime Minister.
The Great Reformer
On assuming power, Mustafa Kamal's first object was to educate the people. This was a
gigantic task, for state education was unknown in Turkey. Therefore there were two
problems: to teach the masses and to train as many teachers as possible.
As he was determined to break down this barrier, Mustafa Kamal declared the old script
to be abolished and replaced by the Roman script. Thereupon he set out on a series of
tours round the country to demonstrate, chalk in hand, how the new script should be
used. The whole population went back to school. Nor was Mustafa Kamal a lenient
master. He tested people on the most unexpected occasions, naming a day, not far
ahead, by which everyone was to have learned the new script.
Once he had simplified the Turkish script, Mustafa Kamal started upon a rather more
difficult task-that of simplifying the language. This was urgently necessary for two
reasons: first, because educated speech under the Ottoman Empire had been a mixture
of Turkish, Arabic and Persian and second, because he realized that the elaborate modes
of address and flowery phrases were out of place in the modern world. Accordingly he
set up a committee for the purification of the language by substituting genuine Turkish
words for those of Arabic and Persian origin.
In the new world created by him there was no need for the old titles and nobilities
which meant nothing to the new nobility of effort. The word "Pasha" was abolished:
every man became Bay hitherto a title of some honour, women became Bayan.
No less revolutionary was the abolition in 1925 of the national head-dress, called the
Fez. The Fez was in origin Greek, but it had come to be associated closely with Turkish
life. When the wearing of hats was made compulsory there were barely enough to go
round, so that the houses of the foreigners were ransacked and men even went about in
Paris models. It was reported from Izmir that in a village near by, the peasants unable to
obtain bowlers, or caps, discovered in the closed shop of a departed Armenian
haberdasher a stock of ladies' summer hats, and seizing the entire selection, wore them,
ribbons, feathers and all.
Finally, to complete this account of Kamal's reforms, we must mention that which was
most striking, namely the abolition of the veil. As early as 1923 he had addressed the
people of western Anatolia on the subject of women's rights. "Our nation has decided to
be strong," he had said, "and our absolute need today is the higher education of
women. They shall be instructed in every field of science and receive the same degrees
as men." Mustafa Kamal prepared the country for the change by a tour of the towns and
villages during which he addressed himself principally to the menfolk.
No less great was the economic advance. In 1919, there was only one railway in Turkey,
and judged by modern standards no roads at all. Mustafa Kamal inaugurated great
development and construction schemes both for railways and motor roads. In 1919,
there were 150 factories in Turkey, in 1933, 2000, while the Turkish Five-Year Plan,
inaugurated in 1934, encouraged heavy industry still further. The banking system was
organized and the Ottoman public debt (taken over from the Sultanate by the new
Republic) was reduced to one-tenth of its former size. All this was achieved without
further borrowing.
The changes in all branches of Turkish life have been stupendous. It would be no
exaggeration to say that at the time that Mustafa Kamal set to work, the mental and
political development of the masses in Turkey was on a level with that of the people of
Western Europe in the mid-eighteenth century. The Turks have now traversed in a few
years the road which the people of Western Europe took 150 years to travel. The
thorough democratization of the nation, and the awakening of the people and the
unchaining of their powers has been the work of Mustafa Kamal.

LESSON
16
A DIALOGUE
Usman Naveed
(Farasat and Saleem, two friends in the class, are
sitting in the college library, reading a newspaper)
Farasat: Oh, my goodness! Another incident of child abuse this week!
Saleem: (taking the newspaper from Farasat) Good heavens! What has happened to our
city?
(both the students are sitting pensively, meanwhile their class teacher enters the library
and happens to sit at the same table where both of them are sitting.) Teacher: Assalam-
o-Alaikum. (Both the students say: Wa-alaikumussalam, Sir.) Both of
you seem quite dejected. Is everything all right?
Farasat: (hands over the newspaper to the teacher and points out the particular news.)
Teacher: Oh! I see. This is not the place to discuss, come to my room and have a cup of
tea. We will discuss the matter there.
(the teacher's room, where the teacher and both the students are sitting, taking tea.)
Teacher: (addressing them) Well, child abuse is taking place more frequently nowadays.
Farasat: Sir, kindly tell us, in detail, about the menace of child abuse.
Teacher: Well, child abuse means maltreatment of a child. Child abuse can be
categorized into four categories: neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse, and sexual
abuse. A child may be subjected to one or more forms of abuse. Abuse can occur within
the family, in the community or in an institutional setting. The abuser may be someone
known to the child or a stranger, and can be an adult, or another child. Saleem: Sir,
recent tragic incidents faced by children, leading to mass protest, are very
grave examples of child abuse.
Teacher: Saleem, you are quite right.
Saleem: Sir, such incidents of child abuse are very tragic. How can we overcome them?
Teacher: Well, child protection issues always evoke a passionate public outcry. At the
same time, child protection is a complex and multi-dimensional concept. However,
every child and young person have the right to grow up in a safe and supportive family
and to have opportunities that assist them to reach their full potential. One of the ways
this can be achieved, is through supporting the families to provide for the physical,
social, and emotional needs of children and young people. Farasat: Sir, but the family
system is not as strong in our country as it used to be in the past.
Saleem: Sir, in such situations what are other factors that can be helpful in protecting a
child from abuse?
Teacher: All religions, as well as the Constitution of our country, can play an important
role in this regard.
Saleem: Can you kindly explain further, Sir?
Teacher: Well, Islam cares about childhood and Muslims regard children as gifts and a
trust from Allah. Therefore, it pays particular attention to the rights of children and to
the proper manner of raising them so that they can be equipped to face the difficulties
of life.
Farasat: Sir, what exactly are the basic rights of children in Islam?
Teacher: They have the right to be fed, clothed and protected until they reach
adulthood. The child has the right to good education and a stable environment.
Saleem: Is our government also responsible for child safety?
Teacher: Yes, as I have pointed out earlier, the Constitution of Pakistan, under Article 25,
guarantees the protection of children, mothers and the structure of family. Farasat: Has
the government taken any practical step towards the safety of children? Teacher: A Child
Protection and Welfare Bureau has also been set up by the Punjab Government.
Moreover, Pakistan, in 1990, ratified the UN Resolution regarding the rights of children.
A report has to be sent to the UN in this regard after every five years.
Saleem: Sir, as we observe in media as well as in our everyday life that a lot of children
around the world suffer daily from violence, exploitation, and abuse. How can they be
treated in such an inhuman way and what is happening in our world? Teacher: Saleem,
do you know that some of the greatest threats to child safety are to children living in
extreme poverty? The most predictable result is malnutrition.
It has led to stunting in our new generation.
Saleem: Oh! I see.
Farasat: Sir, what are the other threats?
Teacher: Lack of access to quality education is another threat to child safety.
Saleem: Sir, how can we counter this threat?
Teacher: Improving education decreases both the poverty and the child mortality rates
of a country. Karem De Crow, the famous American lawyer, author, activist and feminist
of 20° century said "....... Where girls are educated, the economy and standards of living
rise."
Farasat: Sir, armed conflicts are taking place in many parts of our world especially in
Muslim countries. People are also migrating from such areas. Are there any threats to
the children living in such areas?
Teacher: Well, Farasat, you have pointed out towards a very important aspect of the
whole matter. Children are also migrating from such areas. Refugee and migrant children
face specific issues of their own. When they move to safer countries, often as they seek
asylum, they are exposed to potential kidnapping. Many of such children become slaves,
soldiers and drug traffickers. Stronger child protection policies are crucial to fight against
child trafficking.
Teacher: Farasat, do you know that another threat towards child safety can be found in
areas of armed conflict?
Farasat: Sir, can you tell us about it?
Teacher: There are several concerns for children who live near war-zones. These
concerns arise due to many child casualties resulting from explosive weapons because
children, living in such areas, see such weapons as toys. Explosives limit access to safe
places for children and their families. Childen as young as eight join military groups,
either forced to escape poverty, defend their community or only revenge.
Saleem: Sir, how can we cope with such situations?
Teacher: Well, it can be changed by starting disarmament and demining processes.
Moreover, International Organizations like UNICEF and UN can play their part by working
to release children from armed groups and help them return home. It will be interesting
to know that many of the threats to child safety are inseparably linked, which may be
the key to solve these daunting issues.
Farasat: Sir, but these threats are growing.
Teacher: Well, Farasat, you are right. But there is hope. The first step to resolve these
problems is gaining knowledge about them. Individuals should share this information
with others and strive to eradicate threats to child safety. Through enlightenment and
effort, it is possible to create a world in which children only need to focus on one thing:
living happily.
Saleem: Sir, what are the roles of parents, teachers and media under such
circumstances? Teacher: Every segment of society has a role to play in this regard.
Parents should get their children educated. Rather they should consider it the top
priority of their life. Educating a girl child is actually educating a nation. Government for
its part, should impart free and compulsory education to every child. Teachers can play a
very important role in the reporting about child abuse. They can teach the youngsters
about how danger may lurk among people they love and trust. They can also alert a
child's parents in this regard.
Farasat: Sir, but where does media stand in society for the protection of child's rights?
Teacher: Well, media is also equally involved in the efforts taken to eliminate child abuse
and to promote conducive environment for child safety.
Farasat: What else can be done in this regard, Sir?
Teacher: Well, government should strengthen the existing institutions, such as families
of children in vulnerable circumstances, social welfare departments, and law enforcing
agencies. If a child comes to education institution with bruises or sexual abuse, the
teacher should be able to report this to the relevant authority that is social welfare,
which will investigate further before reporting to the law enforcement agencies and
ultimately to court, if necessary.
Farasat: Sir, another issue which we haven't discussed so far is child health. In my
opinion, child health is as important as any other aspect considered for child protection
so far.
Teacher: Farasat, you are right. As you know the health of a child is of prime importance
for parents in particular and for a nation in general. A child's physical and mental health,
both are important.
Saleem: Sir, how can we ensure child health?
Teacher: A child should be given balanced diet, adequate shelter, immunization, and a
healthy living environment in order to protect his or her physical health.
Farasat: What about a child's mental health, Sir?
Teacher: It is necessary in this regard that a family supports a child by providing
unconditional love, opportunity to play with other children, safe and sound
surroundings, appropriate guidance and instructive discipline. Moreover, family should
nurture a child's confidence and self-esteem. The availability of encouraging teachers
and supportive caretakers should also be ensured for a child's protection.
Well, both of you have asked so many questions about child abuse and how to protect
it. But you, perhaps, have forgotten to mention the role of social media in this regard.
(Saleem and Farasat both raise their hands out of astonishment.)
Oh, sorry Sir, we really forgot to talk about social media.
Farasat: Sir, as you are aware, social media is very active nowadays. Recently, a wave of
child abuse has arisen. People are using social media for expressing their views about
these tragic incidents. What is your view about the role of social media and its influence
on children's lives with reference to child abuse and protection? Teacher: Social media is
quickly evolving in front of our eyes and it is almost impossible to reject and hide from
this new form of media.
Saleem: Our whole class is already extensively using social media. Almost all the
classmates are connected with one another on Facebook etc.
Teacher: Certainly, social media is an important part of socialization within peer groups.
It is now also used for the marketing and motivation of people so that they can become
a part of a larger community. Social media is undeniably changing the way one
communicates and how one finds and shares information. Farasat: Sir, both of us use
Twitter and Facebook. It is very interesting and has become a sort of hobby for us.
Teacher: With these advances in technology, one can share things about oneself and the
world.
Farasat: Sir, we have made a lot of friends through Facebook and prior to social media
we had to communicate and share personally with our friends.
Teacher: So, you will be well aware that these social media sites offer adolescents new
ways to approach communication and entertainment and the long term effects are still
unknown. Therefore, parents should be more aware of this new media and what it
offers, both good and bad, for our children.
Saleem: Sir, you have referred to the long term effects of social media but what urgently
required is to find out the impact of social media on a child's life with reference to child
abuse. This is the need of the hour keeping in mind the recent tragic incidents of child
abuse.
Farasat: Sir, media is regularly reporting incidents of child abuse. Social media, for its
part, is extensively used by its users for sharing their views.
Teacher: It should be known that social media can affect the mental health of teens.
Those teens who use social media tend to be more antisocial and aggressive.
Saleem: This is an eye opener for us.
Teacher: You must also be alert about paedophiles who use the internet to lure young
people.
Farasat: Sir, what is the role of parents in such a situation?
Teacher: Parents can use technology that blocks access to bad content on the internet
but must be aware that this technology does not replace their supervision or guidance.
Saleem: Sir, what else can they do to protect their children?
Teacher: Wise parents will learn how to protect their children by immersing themselves
in the media and taking advice from many resources aimed at protecting children, while
allowing them to reap the rich benefits in a safe environment.
Saleem: Sir, media is also reporting increasing incidents of juvenile delinquency along
with those of child abuse.
Farasat: Sir, what has gone wrong with our society? Where are our traditions? Has our
family system broken?
Teacher: Well, you should know that committing crimes by those people who have not
reached adulthood or the age of maturity, is considered juvenile delinquency.
Saleem: Sir, what are the main causes of juvenile delinquency?
Teacher: Poverty, illiteracy, family issues such as broken homes through abandonment or
divorce, outside influences in the forms of drug use, hardship of physical or mental
disability faced by a teen, peer pressure, influences and the negative role of mass media
and technology due to the exposure of teens to everything through social media.
Farasat: Sir, which one of them is the main cause?
Teacher: Poverty. Actually it is the poverty which drives them into criminal acts for
survival. Most of our youth commit crimes due to poverty.
Farasat: Sir, is there any other cause?
Teacher: Juveniles detention in jail with adult criminals is another cause.
Saleem: Sir, how can the situation be changed in favour of juvenile delinquents?
Teacher: Juveniles should not be tried with criminals because juveniles are immature
and their decision making capability is not fully developed. Their imprisonment with
adults is the cause of a bigger risk to society.
Farasat : Sir, is there any treatment for the victim of child abuse?
Teacher: Yes, there is treatment such as counselling and psychotherapies for such
victims. The most important is emotional support and caring behavior from the family. It
should never blame the child for this type of mishap. A psychologist can perform very
well in this regard otherwise it can create a lifelong effect on the abused child. It can
hinder his/her academic performance as well as social skills, for example, academic
achievement, self-esteem and interpersonal relationships and its impact can last for the
whole life. After proper treatment, the victim can perform very well in every field of life
and live a happy and healthy life. The treatment for such kind of trauma may be
received from the hospitals.
Farasat and Saleem: Sir, thanks a lot for this valuable information.
Teacher: I hope that both of you have fully grasped all the aspects of this sensitive and
vital issue. You must keep in mind a hadith of Hazrat Muhammad () who said, "He
is not one of us who does not have mercy on our young ones and does not respect our
elders".
(Farasat and Saleem say Allah Hafiz and leave the teacher's room)