UNIONS AND FORGET-ME-NOTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 308, 28 December 1940, Page 2 (Supplement)

UNIONS AND FORGET-ME-NOTS

totwE just come in from weed80411' forget-me-nots out of my POPUpatch. Uprooting the beautor the take, of the useful, [•peek. The onion seems frtJf* been bom to win, punS£*ellow that he is, all stiff and "As beside the shy f orget-me-rSf_ '• ras not with an easy conscience i plucked big handfuls of those lower* from around my ordered >f onions, looking for ail the world pmpldiera on parade. All the same am o ed on because, plcbian. that I am, partial to onions either in stews TOM* ft bread ana cheese, and so the TOM' me " nat * *** to go ' TOM. Wrong Flacf , as been said many times before feed* are really only some of the Jul things of nature growing in A „ d 5t place*. These little blue flowers Bite nice on yonder rockery, but 3ey seem quite out of place. And *aw came they here? i BRtid somewhere recently that cer- .«« ants and .flowers have a natural i for one another. They have their . << Perhaps onions like forget-me-onions don't like being fSSgPr that's -why you seldom eat i going to meet your best | §>lk don't think that it matters —jh when they're married. I think t j matter* all the more then. A Bore forget-me-nots among the ~.-.. f of married life would make for we gardeners like the . ' ''af good clean rows of things, and | PVul a* the forget-me-not may be I othave to be sacrificed for the sake ufid order and discipline among those *' T!P*y onions, who are in training for Rioter stew pan. ■

By Rev. C. W. Chdndler

Does this mean that beauty must always be sacrificed to utility? And, by the came token, must goodness and truth, the remaining two persons in this perfect triumvirate, be sacrificed to the useful as well? It looks like H. Concessions to Beauty I am sure that the average business man would sacrifice beauty for efficiency at the typewriter. If he doesn't he is heading for trouble. A pomaded ledgerkeeper may not be neatly a* efficient as. the unkempt fellow with a flair for figures. The same may not be true o! those who put girls behind glove counters but even there there'* a limit to the concessions that can be given to 'beauty. The world, as distinct from God, likes beauty just so long as it does not interfere with profits. What, for instance, would be the good of reciting the. Beatitude* at a board meeting? "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth." "Did ever you hear such rot," says the corpulent controller of most of the ehares. It will be a good day for the world when such things can occur. Although onions may bring tears to your eyes, there is no sentiment in business. "Everything must be sacrificed to the war effort," and if truth isn't actually on the casualty list, she is only escaping by the proverbial "skin of her teeth." A New Year Resolution If only by way of solid protest against the beastly utilitarianism of the age in which we live, I'm going to plant forget-me-nots between my rows of onions next year, and I am going to do penance for having pulled them out this morning.

I think that the world has got to begin to mix a little more religion—a little more beauty and truth in all its business undertakings. Not the beauty as expressed in attractive poster advertising with tons of sex appeal, but the beauty for beauty's sake of a bunch of forget-me-nots or a passage from the Bible hung up in a barber's saloon instead of those coloured portraits of cup winners and bathing beauties. If there had been a few more forget-me-nots ajnongst the onions of good business .in during the ■ past century, there would be fewer slums there than there, are to-day in the big manufacturing centres. Stephen Leacock, in his recent book, "Lincoln Frees the Slaves," says thai the most outstanding feature of this age in the eyes of posterity will be the fact of its coldblooded acceptance of poverty as a perfectly natural condition in society—calling for nothing more than soup and blankets by way of amelioration. The sooner we start planting a few "flowers" among our "vegetables," the sooner shall we be reaping a worthier harvest of health and happiness for all, instead of opulence for the few and varying degrees of struggling insufficiency for the vast majority of mankind. The Garden of the Mind Let this be one of your New Year resolutions: "I am going to plant forget-me-nots among my onions. I'm going to find time for the solid contemplation of the good and the beautiful. lam going to begin to make the garden of my mind produce a few exotic blooms. •> ;

Some flowers of truth that have so far been foreign to its soil, instead of the tangled mass of confused thinking that in the past it has been producing. ■ "Among my common or garden onions I'm going to plant a few forget-me-nots." What a different world this would be if we were more inclined than we are to uproot the merely useful for the sake of the good and the beautiful —to sacrifice, upon occasion, utility for truth. The "Golden Rule" applied to every business transaction would be the same as growing forget-me-nois between the oniion rows.