THE NITRATE PROBLEM 3 



with a geometric progression ? There are some who 

 would have us believe that the history of the earth 

 is a succession of cycles, that civilization attains to a 

 certain point, and then, like Sisyphus's stone, falls 

 back to the bottom of the hill, only to be rolled up 

 it again by toilsome effort. With such a conception 

 I have no concern here. Inevitably, recorded his- 

 tory tells us nothing of it. In any case we can know 

 of nothing except a small portion of the hill up which 

 we have been ascending, but the study of that small 

 portion of the hill is amply sufficient to stimulate our 

 imagination, and may be to arouse our alarm. 



Quite early in the history of the world we can 

 glimpse at the material origins of civilization. Even 

 to-day there are great areas where the road exists 

 only in the primitive form of the track, where the 

 wheel is unknown; tradition, wrongh perhaps, has 

 brought down to us the tale of when and how the 

 wedge and the screw were first devised as aids to 

 man's enterprise. As we glance back over the pages 

 of history a matter of some three thousand years 

 we seem to see something in it which suggests that 

 the world's progress is a geometric progression, and 

 that we are at a point to-day when each doubling of 

 the terms in the series involves the most formidable 

 consequences. Can we realize that in the thirteenth 

 century lumps of coal were being given to the poor 

 in Scotland as alms, and that as recently as 1735 the 

 coal consumption of England attained only two 

 million tons in the year ? Do we appreciate the 

 fact that it is not until 1925 that we shall celebrate 

 the centenary of the first steam railway, that it 



