The Press Tuesday, December 31, 1929. The Close of the Year.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19815, 31 December 1929, Page 8

The Press Tuesday, December 31, 1929. The Close of the Year.

It would be pleasant to be able to say of 1929 that it has brought the whole world nearer to permanent peace, and our own Dominion and Empire within reach of their former prosperity. Some of us perhaps hoped a year ago that it would be possible now to say j this, and we are perhaps depressed j that there is no clear warrant for it. But it is not a sufficient cause for depression that we have been refused the unattainable. The disappointments of 1929 have been numerous, and have occasionally been very sharp, but they have not been more numerous than most wise people allowed for, and they could easily have had a keener edge. It will be remembered that the Empire began with a sick King, the Homeland with economic depression, and the Dominion with worse political confusion than it had known for two generations. Outside our Empire the only definitely cheering fact was the attitude of the leading Powers to war. It is probably safe to say that this attitude has hardened, and will go on hardening; but there is no doubt about the restoration of the King's health, none about the improvement in the Homeland's economic outlook, and not very much about the lesson of the last twelve months on the average New Zealand citizen and elector. Even in financial and industrial affairs growth should be measured not in cubits but in fractions of inches, and it js certainly not true that either the world or our own small corner of it shows no growth worth measuring. Even in New Zealand, where so much has happened during the year that no one expected to happen—an earthquake, for example, and the partial collapse of the wool market—there is no really alarming symptom but the attitude of the Government to the primary producer. We print on another page a collection of messages sent specially to The Press by outstanding Dominion figures representing all shades of thought. They are not all unshadowed by anxiety, nor would anyone reading them and nothing else—a visitor from another world, for example, or from a remote part of this—conclude from them that we are on the eve of a year which will flow with milk and honey. But they certainly suggest that a year of average prosperity, and more than average progress, lies ahead of us if we choose to take advantage of our opportunities. The outstanding feature of 1929 at home and abroad has not been its setbacks, even to world-improvers, but the erratic course it seems to have led us. It would perhaps be possible, if the task were worth attempting, to find a phrase that would fairly accurately describe 1929 in New Zealand; but no one could say what kind of a year it has been for the Empire as a whole, or give it now the kind of label that historians will no doubt find for it in a hundred or five hundred years. La New Zealand we have had earthquakes and burglaries and fires and unseasonable weather, but we have also grown or begun to grow abundant crops, and found more money and better conditions for unemployed labour than we have ever thought it safe to offer before. On the other side of the world we have had the Great Powers outlawing war, and relatively feeble and impoverished nations carrying on continuous revolutions. The agreement with the Vatican was no sooner signed in Rome than one of the signatories invited the other to a trial of strength. Canada and the United States indulged in warlike talk over the sinking of the I'm Alone, and a week or two later proclaimed, what has long been one of the international wonders of the world, their contempt for a fortified frontier. The armies of occupation leave the Rhine, and the Allies are then told, of course for political purposes, that they left without the sanction or approval of the one Commander all the Allied forces during "the war agreed to trust and follow. And so it goes on right through—a Labour Government in Britain fighting in Europe for the British taxpayer; a United Stales of Europe offered as a defence against the United States of America; airships and aeroplanes flying round the world, horizontally and vertically, and crashing over the English Channel; the coldest day in Europe for a hundred years (February 11th) followed by the greatest activity naturalists have ever noticed among insects and birds in the spring.

It is only when we turn to the toll in precious lives that we find a year precisely like all others. The number of supremely great men and women carried off has occasionally been surpassed, but 1929 has been very heavy in the losses of eminent people who have played a leading part in world affairs. The political world has lost men like Lord Rosebery and M. Clemenceau, whose work was long since done, and a man like Dr. Stresemann, who seemed indispensable. Science has lost Professor Bickerton and Sir Ray Lankester. Religion and social reform mourn General Booth. Rev. Dr. Meyer. Dame Fawcett. Literature's losses — they are more often journalism's—include Stacy Aumonier, Harold Begbie, Edward Carpenter, W. L. Courtnev, Brander Matthews, T. P. O'Connor The stage has lost Henry Arthur Jones. The world's fighting forces are without Marshal Foch, Admiral Scheer, General you Sanders, Marshal Cadoma,

and the Grand Duke Nicholas. But the heaviest losses relatively have been New Zealand's own —Bishop Cleary. Dr. Chilton, Sir John Findlay, Miss M. V. Gibson. Mr 11. C. Keane, Sir Charles Skerret:. and. abroad, Dr. Harold Williams — i-j name a few only of the most sorely missed. We can rebuild our political structure, and make good our economic losses, but it will be a long time before we shall again be served by men and women of the worth of those seven.