Show Forces Striving to Make l Certain That Our System Does Not Collapse By BRUCE CATTON CATION Among the minor interesting news items of the day is ic the report that the tomb of oC Attila famous many centuries cen cen- tunics ago as the scourge of God has been found in a river bed in Czecho Whether the report Is correct or not the story at least performs the I useful function of or setting one thinking thinking think think- ing about the contrasting ways in which civilized society can be threat coed ened with destruction In Attila's day when the Huns Hues came rolling up out of ot the eastern darkness the crumbling society of the time lived in fear of invasion by barbar ians lans Wave after atter wave of savage destroyers destroyers des des- came caine in over the eastern borders bor bordens ders dens each one more destructive than I the one before Attila was the last and worst The whole framework of civilization seemed to be collapsing before him It took society many centuries cen cen- tunes to pick up the pieces S 0 o PS When the Historian Gibbon wrote his Decline and Fall he remarked that society no longer faced that kind of danger The framework he said could never crumble again There were no nomore more barbaric hosts to menace menace men men- ace the frontiers And a few years after he had written that came the French revolution just to prove that society could be threatened threatened threat threat- ened with destruction even when its frontiers were completely peaceful Destruction that time came from the bottom instead of ot from the outside and it left leU reverberations quite as profound as those that Attila's host put in motion Today we have no barbaric hordes on the borders and and in in spite of the shivers of the timid timid we we are not in any real danger of an uprising from below The threat that our society faces is entirely new and because itIs itIs it itIs Is so new it is is all the more ous It comes from the top S SS Our danger that it Is to say Is not that we shall be overwhelmed by external enemies or turned over bythe by Ithe the downtrodden masses It is that our order of ot things may collapse of i iown iti its own weight because the men men at the top have set up an establishment that they cant can't quite master What i is going on at Washington at no nois noW now is simply an art attempt to rearrange things so as to make intelligent direction dine dine- tion of our society more easy It may ay look radical at fi first st glance hit but It essentially deeply conservative We have neither an Attila nor a Robes Robes- pierre to fear I if trouble tome comes it will be entirely our own fault |