Festina Lente
Latin tags are rather out of fashion, and the one above quoted (almost never properly accented) seems less than ever a popular precept. Man was never much given to "make haste slowly" and at the moment he is more than in the past disposed to rush things. Most seem to expect to see this Brave New World of which one hears so much spring into being at a single bound, as Pallas sprang, fully accoutred, from the head of Zeus at the tap of Hephaistos' hammer. We're all impatient of delay. We want the mills of God to grind exceedingly small—but we demand that they speed up to top production forthwith. Quite probably they won't do it. It is fervently to be hoped, and prayed, that ultimately there will be a parliament of man and federation of the world. Tennyson wasn't altogether a bad prophet. Already we have seen navies battling in the celestial blue, and one reads daily of aerial argosies freighted with golden bales. Unfortunately there's a delay in furling the world's battleflags and the war drums seem to throb sforzando e accelerando. Nationalistic feelings are by no means dead yet. international jealousy seems uncomfortably alive. And scared as everybody may be by the atomic bomb, it may be well not to expect too much of human beings when it comes to federating all mankind, lest one be disappointed. About all we can do is keep on trying, and hoping, and praying that men will one day learn to be wise rather than merely selfish. Self-interest, while it remains the driving force among us, needs to be enlightened self-interest. A dime, held close to the- eye, may occult the sun—and we humans are adept at making such use of it, generally to our cost, despite the fact that we ought to know better.
