We might say that justice has been done when a man's innocence or guilt has been proved beyond doubt.
Justice is part of the complex machinery of the law.
Those who seek it, undertake an arduous journey and can never be sure that they will find it.
Judges, however wise or eminent, are human and can make mistakes.
There are rare instances when justice almost ceases to be an abstract conception.
Reward or punishment are out quite independent of human interference.
At such times, justice acts like a living force.
When we use a phrase like it serves him right, we are, in part, admitting that a certain set of circumstances has enabled justice to act of its own accord.
When a thief was caught on the premises of a large fur store one morning, the shop assistants must have found it impossible to resist the temptation to say 'it serves him right'.
The shop was an old-fashioned one with many large, disused fireplaces and tall, narrow chimneys.
Towards midday, a girl heard a muffled cry coming from behind one of the walls.
As the cry was repeated several times, she ran to tell the manager who promptly rang up the fire-brigade.
The cry had certainly come from one of the chimneys, but as there were so many of them, the firemen could not be certain which one it was.
They located the right chimney by tapping at the walls and listening for the man's cries.
After chipping through a wall which was eighteen inches thick, they found that a man had been trapped in the chimney.
As it was extremely narrow, the man was unable to move, but the firemen were eventually able to free him by cutting a huge hole in the wall.
The sorry-looking, blackened figure that emerged, at once admitted that he had tried to break into the shop during the night but had got stuck in the chimney.
He had been there for nearly ten hours.
Justice had been done even before the man was handed over to the police.
Book III Lesson 36
A chance in a millionWe are less credulous than we used to be In the nineteenth century, a novelist would bring his story to a conclusion by presenting his readers with a series of coincidences --most of them wildly improbable.
Readers happily accepted the fact that an obscure maid-servant was really the hero's mother.
A long-lost brother, who was presumed dead, was really alive all the time and wickedly plotting to bring about the hero's down- fall.
And so on.
Modern readers would find such naive solutions totally unacceptable.
Yet, in real life, circumstances do sometimes conspire to bring about coincidences which anyone but a nineteenth century novelist would find incredible.
A German taxi-driver, Franz Bussman, recently found a brother who was thought to have been killed twenty years before.
While on a walking tour with his wife, he stopped to talk to a workman.
After they had gone on, Mrs Bussman commented on the workman's close resemblance to her husband and even suggested that he might be his brother.
Franz poured scorn on the idea, pointingout that his brother had been killed in action during the war.
Though Mrs Bussman was fully acquainted with this story, she thought that there was a chance in a million that she might be right.
A few days later, she sent a boy to the workman to ask him if his name was Hans Bussman, Needless to say, the man's name was Hans Bussman and he really was Franz's long-lost brother.
When the brothers were re-united, Hans explained how it was that he was still alive.
After having been wounded towards the end of the war, he had been sent to hospital and was separated from his unit.
The hospital had been bombed and Hans had made his way back into Western Germany on foot.
Meanwhile, his unit was lost and all records of him had been destroyed.
Hans returned to hisfamily home, but the house had been bombed and no one in the neighbourhood knew what had become of the inhabitants.
Assuming that his family had been killed during an air-raid, Hans settled down in a Village fifty miles away where he had remained ever since.
Book III Lesson 37
The Westhaven ExpressWe have learnt to expect that trains will be punctual.
After years of pre-conditioning, most of us have developed an unshakable faith in railway time-tables.
Ships may be delayed by storms; air flights may be cancelled because of bad weather; but trains must be on time.
Only an exceptionally heavy snow fall might temporarily dislocate railway services.
It is all too easy to blame the railway authorities when something does go wrong.
The truth is that when mistakesoccur, they are more likely to be ours than theirs.
After consulting my railway time-table, I noted with satisfaction that there was an express train to Westhaven.
It went direct from my local station and the journey lasted a mere hour and seventeen minutes.
When I boarded the train, I could not help noticing that a great many local people got on as well.
At the time, this did not strike me as odd.
I reflected that there must be a great many people besides myself who wished to take advantage of this excellent service.
Neither was I surprised when the train stopped at Widley, a tiny station a few miles along the line.
Even a mighty express train can be held up by signals.
But when the train dawdled at station after station, I began to wonder.
It suddenly dawned on me that this express was not roaring down the line at ninety miles an hour, but barely chugging along at thirty.
One hour and seventeen minutes passed and we had not even covered half the distance.
I asked a passenger if this was the Westhaven Express, but he had not even heard of it.
I determined to lodge a complaint as soon as we arrived.
Two hours later, I was talking angrily to the station-master at Westhaven.
When he denied the train's existence, I borrowed his copy of the time-table.
There was a note of triumph in my voice when I told him that it was there in black and white.
Glancing at it briefly, he told me to look again.
A tiny asterisk conducted me to a footnote at the bottom of the page.
It said: 'This service has been suspended.'
Book III Lesson 38
The first calendarFuture historians will be in a unique position when they come to record the history of our own times.
They will hardly know which facts to select from the great mass of evidence that steadily accumulates.
What is more they will not have to rely solely on the written word.
Films, gramophone records, and magnetic tapes will provide them with a bewildering amount of information.
They will be able, as it were, to see and hear us in action.
But the historian attempting to reconstruct the distant past is always faced with a difficult task.
He has to deduce what he can from the few scanty clues available.
Even seemingly insignificant remains can shed interesting light on the history of early man.
Up to now, historians have assumed that calendars came into being with the advent of agriculture, for then man was faced with a real need to understand something about the seasons.
Recent scientific evidence seems to indicate that this assumption is incorrect.
Historians have long been puzzled by dots, lines and symbols which have been engraved on walls, bones, and the ivory tusk of mammoths.
The nomads who made these markings lived by hunting and fishing during the last Ice Age, which began about 35,000 B.C.
and ended about 10,000 B.C.
By correlating markings made in various parts of the world, historians have been able to read this difficult code.
They have found that it is connected with the passage of days and the phases of the moon.
It is, in fact, a, primitive type of calendar.
It has long been known that the hunting scenes depicted on walls were not simply a form of artistic expression.
They had a definite meaning, for they were as near as early man could get to writing.
It is possible that there is a definite relation between these paintings and the markings that sometimes accompany them.
It seems that man was making a real effort to understand the seasons 20,000 years earlier than has been supposed.
Book III Lesson 39
Nothing to worry aboutThe rough road across the plain soon became so bad that we tried to get Bruce to drive back to the village we had come from.
Even though the road was littered with boulders and pitted with holes,Bruce was not in the least perturbed.
Glancing at his map, he informed us that the next village was a mere twenty miles away.
It was not that Bruce always underestimated difficulties.
He simply had no sense of danger at all.
No matter what the conditions were, he believed that a car should be driven as fast as it could possibly go.
As we bumped over the dusty track, we swerved to avoid large boulders.
The wheels scooped up stones which hammered ominously under the car.
We felt sure that sooner or later a stone would rip a hole in our petrol tank or damage the engine.
Because of this, we kept looking back, wondering if we were leaving a trail of oil and petrol behind us.
What a relief it was when the boulders suddenly disappeared, giving way to a stretch of plain where the only obstacles were clumps of bushes.
But there was worse to come.
Just ahead of us there was a huge fissure.
In response to renewed pleadings, Bruce stopped.
Though we all got out to examine the fissure, heremained in the car.
We informed him that the fissure extended for fifty yards and was two feet wide and four feet deep.
Even this had no effect.
Bruce engaged low gear and drove at a terrifying speed, keeping the front wheels astride the crack as he followed its zig-zag course.
Before we had time to worry about what might happen, we were back on the plain again.
Bruce consulted the map once more and told us that the village was now only fifteen miles away.
Our next obstacle was a shallow pool of water about half a mile across.
Bruce charged at it, but in the middle, the car came to a grinding halt.
A yellow light on the dash- board flashed angrily and Bruce cheerfully announced that there was no oil in the engine!
Book III Lesson 40
Who's whoIt has never been explained why university students seem to enjoy practical jokes more than anyone else.
Students specialize in a particular type of practical joke: the hoax.
Inviting the fire-brigade to put out a non-existent fire is a crude form of deception which no self-respecting student would ever indulge in, Students often create amusing situations which are funny to everyone except the victims.
When a student recently saw two workmen using a pneumatic drill outside his university, he immediately telephoned the police and informed them that two students dressed up as workmen were tearing up the road with a pneumatic drill.
As soon as he had hung up, he went over to the workmen and told them that if a policeman ordered them to go away, they were not to take him seriously.
He added that a student had dressed up as a policeman and was playing all sorts of silly jokes on people.
Both the police and the workmen were grateful to the student for this piece of advance information.
The student hid in an archway nearby where he could watch and hear everything that went on.
Sure enough, a policeman arrived on the scene and politely asked the workmen to go away.
When he received a very rude reply from one of the workmen, he threatened to remove them by force.
The workmen told him to do as he pleased and the policeman telephoned for help.
Shortly afterwards, four more policemen arrived and remonstrated with the workmen.
As the men refused to stop working, the police attempted to seize the pneumatic drill.
The workmen struggled fiercely and one of them lost his temper.
He threatened to call the police.
At this, the police pointed out ironically that this would hardly be necessary as the men were already under arrest.
Pretending to speak seriously, one of the workmen asked if he might make a telephone call before being takento the station.
Permission was granted and a policeman accompanied him to a call-box.
Only when he saw that the man was actually telephoning the police did he realize that they had all been the victims of a hoax.
Book III Lesson 41
Illusions of Pastoral peaceThe quiet life of the country has never appealed to me.
City born and city bred, I have always regarded the country as something you look at through a train window, or something you occasionally visit during the week-end.
Most of my friends live in the city, yet they always go into raptures at the mere mention of the country.
Though they extol the virtues of the peaceful life, only one of them has ever gone to live in the country and he was back in town within six months.
Evenhe still lives under the illusion that country life is somehow superior to town life.
He is forever talking about the friendly people, the clean atmosphere, the closeness to nature and the gentle pace of living.
Nothing can be compared, he maintains, with the first cock crow, the twittering of birds at dawn, the sight of the rising sun glinting on the trees and pastures.
This idyllic pastoral scene isonly part of the picture.
My friend fails to mention the long and friendless winter evenings which are interrupted only by an occasional visit to the local cinema-virtually the only form of entertainment.
He says nothing about the poor selection of goods in the shops, or about those unfortunate people who have to travel from the country to the city every day to get to work.
Why people are prepared to tolerate a four hour journey each day for the dubious privilege of living in the country is beyond my ken.
They could be saved so much misery and expense if they chose to live in the city where they rightly belong.
If you can do without the few pastoral pleasures of the country, you will find the city can provide you with the best that life can offer.
You never have to travel miles to see your friends.
They invariably live nearby and are always available for an informal chat or an evening's entertainment.
Some of my acquaintances in the country come up to town once or twice a year to visit the theatre as a special treat.
For them this is a major operation which involves considerable planning.
As the play draws to its close, they wonder whether they will ever catch that last train home.
The city dweller never experiences anxieties of this sort.
The latest exhibitions, films, or plays are only a short bus ride away.
Shopping, too, is always a pleasure.
There is so much variety that you never have to make do with second best.
