‘TOO MUCH PROSPERITY’

Press, Volume C, Issue 29602, 26 August 1961, Page 18

‘TOO MUCH PROSPERITY’

Scouts Hear Lord Cobham (N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 25. It had become fatally easy in these comfortable days to drift along placidly in the current of complacency, the Governor - General (Lord Cobham) told Queen’s Scouts at Government House today Lord Cobham, who is Dominion Chief Scout, inspected the Scouts in the ballroom before addressing the 120 on parade. He said drifters moved just enough to keep afloat but made little effort to swim against the tide. Unfortunately life demanded more than that. “The fact that you have become Queen’s Scouts tells me that you realise it. x “We have to be constantly on guard against the creeping paralysis of too much prosperity and too much security. “Physicists tell us that nothing in the whole universe is stationary, not even the sentry outside Buckingham Palace or the Taj Mahal. “I don’t know about that, but I do know that a civilisation can never be stationary. It is either moving forwards or backwards.” Lord Cobham said a cricket match was never in complete equipoise. He discovered when he captained a County side that unless one's side was visibly on top it was in fact losing, and then something drastic had to be done. Apathy, laziness, and cynicism were not merely unattractive negative attributes. They were soul-rotting diseases. Those in the Scouts were in toe vanguard of the fight against these things “and you Queen’s Scouts lead the column, luck to you.”