The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper

My mind, as the days pass, hangs on to that Federal Board. Does that phrase mean, as just possibly it may mean, a world federation, a scientific control of all human life only forty years from now? I find that idea--staggering. I have always believed that the world was destined to unify--"Parliament of Mankind and Confederation of the World," as Tennyson put it--but I have always supposed that the process would take centuries. But then my time sense is poor. My disposition has always been to under-estimate the pace of change. I wrote in 1900 that there would be aeroplanes "in fifty years' time." And the confounded things were buzzing about everywhere and carrying passengers before 1920.

Let me tell very briefly of the rest of that evening paper. There seemed to be a lot of sport and fashion; much about something called "Spectacle"--with pictures--a lot of illustrated criticism of decorative art and particularly of architecture. The architecture in the pictures he saw was "towering--kind of magnificent. Great blocks of building. New York, but more so and all run together". Unfortunately he cannot sketch. There were sections devoted to something he couldn't understand, but which he thinks was some sort of "radio programme stuff."