PUTTING THE CLOCK BACK
was present at a conversation the other day at which parents were lamenting the probable impossibility of going to see their children at half-term. I ventured, as a grand- father, to suggest that we used to get on very well without those visits, when I was at once told that " You cannot put back the clock." I suppose this is a phrase which has always been used and abused by the younger generation, but it seems to me singularly inappropriate at the present time. In its literal sense it is, of course, quite untrue, because you can and do put back a clock when it goes too fast ; but in its wider sense it is nearly equally false, because it rests upon a fallacy (dear to all Socialists) that every advance in time implies progress. The instance I have given above is perhaps a minor one, but the attitude of mind which it implies is, as it seems to me, mischievous at a time like the present. A good many habits have grown up which will have to be discarded, such as the waste of money on cocktails, the enormous sums spent by women on cosmetics, the idea that
it is impossible to get from one place to another except by car, &c., &c., and I think that instead of the clock being " put back " by these changes, it will be considerably advanced. Incidentally Hitler seems to have succeeded in putting the clock several centuries back.—I am, Sir, your obedient
servant, B. A. COHEN. Champions, Limpsfield, Surrey.
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