The Evening Star FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 1932. STRENGTH FROM THE PAST.

Evening Star, Issue 21013, 29 January 1932, Page 8

The Evening Star FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 1932. STRENGTH FROM THE PAST.

“ Let us attack, depression and apathy with good sense and good humour,” said the Prince of Wales in his fine address to a great gathering of youth. The Prince’s appeal was made for more social service—not merely the social service that depends upon organisations, but social service in the sense of the “ kindliness of man to man,”, in which every individual can play his part. One of the best forms in which it is being shown hero is that of the “ adoption ” of families, which makes kindness personal as well as continuous. It is hard to be cheerful when the times are adverse, but a new definition of depression which we have just read shows how the attempt is being made at Home. It reads as follows;—" Depression, a period during which people have to go without things which their parents never had.” There is a lot of truth in that consoling description, though it may not cover everything. The best help that could be given to hundreds of families—small families—in‘our New Zealand cities would be if someone could build them three or four-roomed houses, providing not much more than healthfulness and shelter, such as the pioneers accepted as a matter of course, and which they could rent, without the constant fear of eviction, for about ten shillings a week. But if such a building scheme were suggested, what an outcry there would be against the “ lowering of our standards ” 1 Another, and a cognate way in which it has been sought at Home to sustain the nation’s spirit in dark days has been that of recalling earlier days which were like them, whose shadows gave place to sunshine. The pioneers who roughed it had an object—so our disgruntled ones say. But the pioneers who lived long enough suffered successive depressions, and they did not all win through them to prosperity. Nor is there any reason for supposing that present times will be always as bad as they are. Someone lias quoted a statement from ‘ Harper’s Weekly ’ of 1857, which might pass for a description of the world’s latest troubles. "It is a gloomy moment in history,” says the writer. " Not for many years—not in the lifetime of most men who read this paper—has there been so much grave and deep apprehension; never has the future seemed so incalculable as at/this time. In our own country there is universal commercial prostration and panic, and thousands of our foremost fellow-citizens are turned out against the approaching winter without employment and without the prospect of it.” Ho went on to say how in half the other countries it was the same, with the shadow of war looming over Europe, and a “ deadly insurrection ” disturbing India. Yet the world survived its troubles of 1857. The troubles which followed the Napoleonic Wars have often been described, and Lord Derby has unearthed a record of a still earlier period—l749—which would match the jeremiads of two centuries later. The Lord Derby of that time writes to a correspondent: “I am obliged to you for your favour of the 4th and Bth, and most heartily wish success to all endeavours that tend to promote and extend our trade, which in our present miserable circumstances seems to ho the only means to save an almost bankrupt nation, unless our Governours will please to add thereto the suppression of luxury by wholesome laws and by good example, and set up such an economy with regard to offices, employments, and all public payments, as is rather to bo wished than expected.” In a few more years the tide had turned, and England was at tho height of her prosperity and fame. Depressions there have been in every ccnturv. They did not begin with

the capitalist system. If the same qualities can be shown to-day as were shown in the past this one will be much shortened, and the qualities have not passed. They were shown in Britain when the Chancellor read his last Financial Statement, and told how all classes were striving to help him to balance his Budget. “ Old age pensioners have returned their pension books. War pensioners have offered to forgo their pensions for the year. National war savings certificates have been returned cancelled. Postal orders, large and small, pour in. Children have se::t from their savings boxes shillings and half-crowns to help the nation in its need. Factory girls have come to mo with collections taken in the workshops, and to-day, following many other similar gifts, I received a 5 per cent, war loan bond for £I,OOO to be cancelled.” The spirit has ‘been shown again recently by the thousands wh3 have paid their income tax before the time —a gruelling income tax in a hard time—to help the Treasury, The spirit is not weaker in New Zealand. We can chafe at statements that the wage paid at the Deep Stream Camp, with no claims on it for rent or maintenance, is “ not enough to keep modern young men in scent,” and that the worst injustice is done to single men (as another correspondent infers) when they are “ driven out of the towns.” But those statements are not meant literally when they are made by much-tried men not eligible for the Deep Stream relief themselves, and those men who make them and mean them are not typical of the unemployed. The. toad beneath the harrow knows Precisely where each tooth-point goes. But most of those beneath the harrow dodge the tooth-points silently. There is no cause to impugn either their patience or their courage.