1945's PROGRESS report : the newest and the biggest had produced atomic bombs and Auschwitz --- the oldest and the smallest had produced penicillin

The newest and biggest (dare we also say the brightest?) human civilizations at the top of the ever upward and outward arrow of progress had given the 1945 world nuclear and genocidal horror - but the tiny weak stupid fugal slime cells at the oldest bottom of that arrow of progress had given us life-saving penicillin.

Not a good year, then, for the whole idea of Progress itself....