“Since we have no reason to believe that the author has deliberately exaggerated,” he declared, after summarizing the contents, “we must accept the picture of upper world life as he presents it. And what, therefore, must we conclude? That Agripides was wise, wonderfully wise, when he urged us to submerge. There can hardly be any more distressing subject than the history of the earth; even the most daring satirist, playing upon his imagination to expose the stupidity of the human race, could not offer a blacker picture of follies, crimes and inanities than Anson Harkness has painted for us in all seriousness. For what do we find to be the outstanding historical facts as he depicts them? Has the human race gone continuously forward, forgetting its savage instincts in perfecting a civilization at once beautiful and secure?--has man come to look on man otherwise than as beast looks on beast?--or has society come to be composed of nothing more than a clothed jungle pack? No, my friends--unfortunately no, if we would believe the volume before us. Slave-raids and wars; rebellions and murders; conquest and persecution; treachery and rapine and wholesale exploitation; dynasties that crumble and empires that decompose--these are the sign-posts of the past three thousand years; and evidently there has been no concerted or intelligent effort to create other and less revolting landmarks. “Yet though the darkness seems impenetrable, I can see one faint glimmer of hope. In the self-satisfied blindness of the upper world reposes the possible solution. It is not a solution altogether pleasing to contemplate, but it is the sort of cleansing remedy that nature will sometimes provide when a wound has festered beyond possibility of healing. For if no ordinary cure be attainable, life will sometimes take the sword into her own hands, and with one blow wipe out all her old mistakes, and with one blow bring annihilation. It is that stroke which, it seems to me, is about to fall upon the upper world man, smiting his rancorous and lopsided civilization, and turning against his own throat that knife with which he thinks to gouge out the eyes of his foe. And this is perhaps well, my friends, for after earthly man has committed suicide, the world will be ready for a population of less shortsighted and quarrelsome creatures, be they only beetles or ants!”