EFFECTIVENESS OF THE COMMITTEE ON OCEANOGRAPHY 211 



stopped thousands of years ago, owing to the conditions of modern social life, 

 especially to its urbanization, which interfere with "the survival of the fittest," and 

 make the inferior elements of mankind the most prolific. The human race is 

 certainly still changing, and changing rapidly, but "it is no use galloping if you 

 are going in the wrong direction." These are questions of the very gravest im- 

 portance, to be earnestly studied by those of you who are going to be the reformers 

 we await so anxiously. But surely, even if the race may not have improved 

 physically of late, our ideas have done so. Our ethics and morality have de- 

 veloped far beyond the primitive stage. Yes, certainly, so far as individuals go, 

 though not to the extent that mai^ people think, and certainly not when the 

 individuals combine into groups. 



Nations have hardly begun as yet to have real morality. They are little more 

 than collections of beasts of prey. Private human virtues such as modesty, 

 unselfishness, charity, love of one's neighbor, the feeling of solidarity, still strike 

 them only too often as ridiculous folly if they are urged to practice them in their 

 policies. This may sound a harsh judgment, and perhaps it is too harsh. But 

 let me give you an example that should have shocked much more profoundly 

 than it did the public conscience of mankind: I mean the proceedings of the 

 special Assembly of the League of Nations in March last. Now, this League is 

 just a great and remarkable adventure. A new ship sailing out along new tracks 

 with the future hopes of mankind on board. It marks, we trust, the beginning 

 of a new era in the world's history, attempting as it does, to introduce into the 

 dealings between nations, respect for those virtues I mentioned, and to create a 

 feeling of solidarity and establish real cooperation between them for the better- 

 ment of the world. We, therefore, expected much. But alas, a new spirit of 

 the world cannot be created in a day, and amongst the crew of that ship there 

 are still many sailors who have not forgotten their old habits. The nations of 

 the world met in Geneva in March for one single purpose, which everyone believed 

 to be not only desirable, but even essential to the future of Europe — the purpose 

 of admitting Germany to the League. Everyone imagined that the way was 

 clear. After the Locarno meetings, after the noble speeches breathing interna- 

 tional brotherhood and love, we really thought that the nations of the world had 

 at last turned over a new leaf. We may still hope, since the events of this Sep- 

 tember, that Locarno may have been the begining of something new and better. 

 But in March a great many of our first bright hopes were tragically dispelled. 

 Then we had the spectacle of one nation after another raising obstacles to the 

 fulfilment of our common purpose, and doing so with a disregard for decency which 

 we had none of us believed it would be possible for them to show. And in the 

 end, as you remember, we had to leave Geneva defeated and dismayed, because 

 some States were still determined to think solely of their own interests instead of 

 the world at large. 



Well, in September, we repaired in part the disaster that had happened, and 

 we are profoundly grateful for much that was said and done, but we remember, 

 too, the foul, occult powers that were at work in March, and remembering that 

 we cannot resist the conviction that there is something rotten outside Hamlet's 

 state of Denmark. 



Let me, however, give you another example: The Russian famine in 1921-22, 

 when the Volga region and the most fertile parts of Russia were ravaged by a ter- 

 rible drought — when something like 30 million people, or more, were starving and 

 dying, dying by the thousands. 



A heart-rending appeal for help went out to all the world, and eventually a great 

 many people in this and in other countries helped, and helped generously. But 

 many more were busy trying to find out first who was to blame: was it drought? 

 Or was it the political system of the" Russian state? As if that could ameliorate 

 the terrible suffering or make any difference whatever to those who were dying of 

 starvation. 



But what was worse, there was in various transatlantic countries such an 

 abundance of maize at that time that the farmers did not know how to get rid of 

 it before the new harvest, so they had to burn it as fuel in their railway engines.. 

 At the same time the ships in Europe were idle, and laid up, for there were no 

 cargoes. Simultaneously there were thousands, nay millions, of unemployed. 



All this while 30 million people in the Volga region — not far away and easily 

 reached by our ships — were allowed to starve and die, the politicians of the world 

 at large, except in the United States, trying to find an excuse for doing nothing, on 

 the pretext that it was the Russians' own fault — a result of the Bolshevik system. 



Fancy, if the unemployed had been put on board the idle ships, had been sent 

 to South America, and had brought the maize to the Black Sea, and saved the- 



