Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/142

 truth or a fallacy uttered in London is echoed the following day in Baghdad; an idea born in New York soon captures the mind of Damascus; a discovery made in Paris benefits even the silk worms in the shadow of the Lebanon cedars. A marvellous thing this civilization, even to a sophisticated Oriental, who revels in its romance, which the scribes translate from the columns of the American and European newspapers, as he would in the Arabian Nights. Indeed, those who produced the Arabian Nights are to him incarnate in the makers of our civilization. Therefore—but let the logician draw his own conclusions. This international game of Give and Take is as baffling as any other. To lose in it is to gain, and vice versa.

If the poet of Baghdad realized this, he would not waste his soul in lamentations over buried kingdoms.—O Babylon, Europe is desecrating thy sacred dust. O Nineveh, the Franks have come to mock at thy past. Over thy palaces, O Samiramis, over thy grave, O Belshazzar—but let the poet of