The awakening

Abstract

The monthly contributions to "The Bulletin" over the pen-name CATO appear in booklet form at the solicitation of numerous readers of that independent and deserving newspaper. The writer demurred somewhat before assenting to the re-publication . He was prevailed upon to do so by the insistent submission that in those articles are reproduced facts and aspects of our agitated existence, during the war and after, up to the initiation of the popular regine, which merit to be more durably recorded. They are stated to depict a prevailing condition of thought and action parallel to the feelings and the behaviour of a doped patient, after an operation. Half dazed, he gropes about and mumbles inordinately, until the effects of the anaesthetic cease completely . Likewise our people, blinded, stupefied and rendered speechless by devastating influences, lost the faculty of gauging the real value of all that forms the essence of its life , past and present, and of its hopes and expectations for the future. There only remained extant and operative the animal instincts of self-preservation and materialistic well-being. With the passing of the causes the crystallised war mentality, a compound of fear, subservience and greed, began to melt away . Visions of loftier sentiments and ideals loomed in the clarified horizon. Longings for peace, security, freedom and leisure blossomed forth from the receding chaos.