THRILL OF A PARADE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 307, 28 December 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

THRILL OF A PARADE.

BUT IT GETS NOWHERE.

(By DR. DON D. TULLIS.)

I love a parade. Everybody does. The blare of bugles and roll of drums thrill me through and through.

Seventy-five years ago Walt Whitman wrote of a parade of "Million-footed Manhattan" on Broadway: "When the pageant moves forward I, too, arising, answering, descend to the pavement, merge with the crowd and gaze with them."

Then he got in step and sang, "Beat drums, beat, blow bugles, blow, through the windows, through doors, burst like a ruthless force —so fierce you whirr and pound, you drums, so shrill you bugles blow."

1 not only love to see a parade, but also be a parade—to dress in gay uniform, with feathered cap and tin sword that rattles loudly as I strut on my victorious advance to parades-end. I may be a failure in life, but with my coat of many colours I am peer of every man. But parades never go anywhere. They have no goal or destination. They have no permanence. The sin of this generation lies in the fact that we have tried to prolong a parade into a permanent order of life.

And what a parade! Sham and make-believe, thin layers of veneer, sparkling diamonds made of glass, men on doles driving sedans and fortunes limping along on mortgaged feet. This great American parade is still on. Colour, music, shouting, dancing, drinking and gambling, if perchance a living may be obtained without toil. No one wants to go back to work. The younger generation puts its trust in unemployment insurance and the older generation in the Townsend plan. A near-statistician says there are 124.000,000 people in the United States, 50,000,000 of whom are eligible for old age pensions, leaving 74,000,000 workers. Of these 00,000,000 are children or incompetents or in Government employ, leaving 14,000,000 workers. Of this number 13.999,998 are unemployed, "leaving to produce the nation's goods two persons, you and me, and I am all worn out." I love a parade, but it's time to go back to work. There are problems to be solved, relationships to be mended, standards to be lifted and a ton of unwashed dishes awaiting on the kitchen sink. * Progress does not depend upon pageantry. It is not what we enjoy but what we endure (hat counts. The psalmist said. "I will climb to my rampart." That's the only way to get there. Parades lead nowhere. The way of the cross leads home. — (N.A.N.A.).