DISCOVERY 



A MONTHLY POPULAR 

 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE 



Vol. Ill, No. 35. NOVEMBER 1922. 



PRICE Is. NET. 



DISCOVERY. A Monthly Popular Journal of Know- 

 ledge. 



Edited by Edward Liveing, B.A., Rothersthorpe, 

 Northampton, to whom all Editorial Communications 

 should be addressed. (Dr. A. S. Russell continues to 

 act as Scientific Adviser.) 



Published by John Murray, 50A Albemarle Street, 

 London, W.i, to whom all Business Communications 

 should be addressed. 



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 Ludgate Hill, London, E.C.4. 



Annual Subscription, 12s. 6d. post free ; single numbers, 

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Editorial Notes 



Ox the eleventh day of this month we celebrate the 

 fourth anniversary of the Armistice. It is impossible 

 to look back on the past five years without a feeling 

 that civilised nations and civilised individuals have 

 so far failed to cope with the collective and individual 

 emotions resulting from the war. There is not a 

 nation in Europe, excepting the Scandinavian coun- 

 tries, and Denmark, and one or two small states, that 

 has not lost thousands of its citizens in war and 

 revolution since the Armistice. Russia has been bled 

 white with anarchy and famine ; Poland has fought 

 with Russian invaders and in her turn invaded Russian 

 pro\inces ; Germany has experienced two revolu- 

 tions and has fought the Poles in Silesia ; Montenegro 

 has rebelled against Jugo-Slav domination and been 

 subjected by force of arms ; Spain has carried on 

 protracted fighting in Morocco ; France has defended 

 her interests in S\Tia ; England has lost thousands of 

 her men in Russia, Mesopotamia, Palestine, and 

 Egypt ; there has been civil discord in Ireland and in 

 Itah'. Lately we have been faced with a most danger- 

 ous crisis in the Near East, brought about by the age- 

 old hostility between Greeks and Turks. 



This is only one side of the picture. The effects of 

 war — unemployment, bereavement, sharp changes in 

 social life, reaction after a life of strain and excitement 

 —upon the indi\-idual have been overshadowed in the 



Press by these events affecting the general life of 

 nations. We ask our readers to face the facts and 

 put this question to themselves : " Do I know of a 

 single family or a single individual who has come out 

 u f these last few years unscathed in mind as well as 

 in body ? " We feel sure that anyone whose lot it is 

 to mix a great deal with his fellow human beings will 

 give a negative answer to this question. From day 

 to day he encounters war marriages which have not 

 turned out successfully, pathetically neurotic men and 

 women who have no aims in life except those pleasures 

 which will take them away from its hard realities, 

 people who have lost faith in their religion, who do not 

 know where to turn in search of that thing by which 

 men live — a philosophy to guide their actions — 

 cynicism, uncertainty, despair, a revolt against tradi- 

 tions in social and political affairs, in art and 

 literature. 



War and its aftermath have been the direct and 

 immediate causes of the present state of things, but 

 only the immediate causes, only the agents which 

 have matured the fermentation. In a sense we may 

 consider all the present international chaos as mirror- 

 ing the chaos in the minds of each one of us. On 

 e\ery hand there are signs of a conflict between the old 

 order which wishes to return to the past and the new 

 order which reaches out to grasp new ideals. But, 

 however dimlv we realise it, is not some such conflict 

 taking place in our own minds ? Are we not striving 

 to get out of ourselves and expand into the world 

 around us ? And, surely, the sooner we as individuals 

 can realise our essential similarit\' to every other 

 individual, that what we dislike in others is really 

 what we dislike in ourselves, that in losing ourselves in 

 others we gain our true selves, the sooner will nations 

 cease from mutual distrust and warfare. We urgently 

 need " to take arms against a sea of troubles, and 

 by opposing end them." The "slings and arrows 

 of outrageous fortune " will then disappear from our 

 own lives, and gradually from the life of the world. 

 Neither reaction nor revolution will carry us out of 

 our present difficulties, but an orderly progress based 

 on each individual giving himself in work, s\'mpathj', 

 and love to his fellow men. 

 SI 



