THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 80, 28 December 1940, Page 8

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY

Comments —Reflections Intercession.

Eternal God, Who bast taught us that it is more blessed to give than to receive, we thank Thee for those who are prepared to make the supreme sacrifice for their fel-low-men. We acknowledge that we enjoy many privileges in life through the service of others. Gladly then, would we share in the ministry of giving; accept, we beseech Thee, our gifts of money, of service, and of love, in so far as they are offered sincerely in the cause of justice, freedom, and good faith among men. Amen.

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Isaiah 5.

“In April last,” writes Sir Fabian Ware, Secretary of the Imperial War Graves Commission, “the Imperial War Graves Commission, in full agreement with the Italian authorities, completed the placing of stone tablets in the British War Cemeteries on the Aslago Plateau, in Genoa, and in other Italian towns. These tablets bear the English and Italian inscriptions:— “The British Empire ever remembers together with her own fallen sons those of Italy who gave their lives in the Great War of 1914-1918.” “L’lmpero Britannico sempre ricorda un'itamentc ai suoi figli caduti quell! d’ltalia che banno dato la loro vita nella grande guerra 1914-1918.” "In May the Commission’s Italian representative in Italy informed us that the competent Italian General was visiting the Asiago with him to arrange for the placing of tablets on the great Italian Memorial on the Plateau bearing a reciprocal tribute to the British dead. Comment would now be out of place. Let the facts speak for themselves.”

“The facts of science are indisputable. With the fragmentary knowledge of primitive man at our disposal, we may put what interpretation we like on them so long as we are prepared, as science always is, to readjust our ideas in the light of new facts. But we cannot get away from the horrible truth that behind the immense glittering facade of Western culture lurks the black shadow of Neanderthal man. The cold ferocity, the snarling rage, the sterile sadism, the grunting sensuality we see all around in Central Europe today are, in the literal meaning of the words, brutal and inhuman. Blind and deaf to all chivalry which has flowered down the ages, Teuton and Slav, whose ideals were always animal, have proclaimed themselves with one voice the Palaeolithic People. So it would seem that at long last Man has taken up arms to renew the grim struggle he unwisely abandoned 100 centuries ago, and cleanse Europe of this foul taint.”—Mr. Frank Kingdon Ward, the British scientist, in the “Daily Telegraph,” London.

“Any undergraduate who can satisfy a tribunal that he is a conscientious objector (in most localities not so difficult a task as it should be), and ‘wishes to teach,’ is allowed to continue his university course, proceed to a teaching post, and thus acquire seniority and other advantages over his more patriotic contemporaries. There is a further danger 'in this practice. One of the most tragic consequences of the last war was that, since the first years of it were fought without conscription, most of the young men who should have been leaders of their generation fell. Those who, for conscientious or other reasons, evaded the posts of danger survived out of all due proportion, to set the standards of the post-war generation. Hence many of the intellectual and moral disorders of the last 20 years. By overstocking the teaching profession with those who are too conscientious to fight we are running a real danger of reproducing in the rising generation an intellectual bias from which we have suffered too much already.”—Lord Elton, in a letter to the London “Times.”

“It has been the ‘decadent’ democracies that have produced the finest acts of courage in this war: the outranged British cruisers closing in on the Grat’ Spee; the Finnish infantry cutting Russian columns to pieces in the grim Winter forests; French regiments, misled, betrayed, holding their part of the line like a little Verdun against the German tanks and Stukas; British soldiers of the rear guard at Dunkerque and British civilians manning motor boats to take the defeated but not beaten army home; British men and women—-ordinary, plain-faced people who used to make a fuss, about a cut finger—crawling out of their bombarded homes with the magnificent gesture of the up-pointed thumb; the crew of the Jervis Bay fighting their unarmoured vessel against the German pocket battleship; the airmen of the R.A.F. going up in all weathers against all odds, day after day, night after night, to guard the homes and shrines of Britain; the bomb squads methodically removing time-bombs that may explode at any moment. ■ Shall we deny courage to the German fliers who come over Loudon. Not at all. They have testified their willingness not only to destroy and to kill but to die. But this courage of the free is a different thing. It is not madness. It is not a fanatical yearning for death. It is not personal loyalty to a leader. It is faith, a living faith in freedom.’’ —“New York Times.”

Worth-while Blessings. Give me a good digestion, Lord, And also something to digest. Give me a healthy body, Lord, With sense to keep it at its best. Give me a healthy mind, good Lord, To keep the good and pure in sight, Which, seeing sin, is not appalled, But finds a way to set it right. Give me a mind that is not bored, That does not whimper, whine or sigh; Don’t let me worry overmuch About that fussy thing called “I.” Give me a sense of humour, Lord, Give me the grace to see a joke. To get some happiness in life, And pass it on to other folk. —This prayer was found in the old Chester Cathedral, England.