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Manhattan radio stations, deeming the speech of Mighty Mendelssohn of small importance, cancelled it at the last moment. It went by cable, radiotelephone, and land wire to 2,000 head phones clamped on the ears of the 1,000 delegates. Having heard, they went to their 1,000 homes.
*More ominous was another German voice heard last week, that of Oswald Spengler, long worded philosopher, who has prognosticated The Decline of the West (1918). Said he at Munich, in a speech supposed to do honor to Thomas Alva Edison:
"The progress theory of the 19th Century is buried. All progress is followed by decline. We have reached the end of the age of technique, which has tremendously increased the struggle for existence. . . .
"Man in inventing machines estranged himself from nature, who is now having her terrible revenge by making him the slave of his own inventions. . . .
"All that is left to us is to hold on, struggle on and not resign in view of the sad future."