KEEPING ON

Grey River Argus, 3 June 1942, Page 7

KEEPING ON

(To the Editor, Magazine Page). Sir, —I was watching a woman the other day as she went about her usual work. She did not know she was being watched. The watching was all the more concentrated because I had been told her one and only son was posted missing. Her movements ‘fascinated me. “How can she just go on the same?” I asked myself. “What must she be feeling? Wouldn’t she much rather just do nothing and be alone with her grief?”. All these questions flitted .through my mind, and I realised there was nothing left for her to do but to go on with her ordinary everyday life. ,

Then it occurred to me that that is all a great many of us can do as the weeks go by. A friend of mine asked me to-day if I had noticed the great restrictions which had crept into our lives. Coupons, rationing, limitation of travel, high prices, black-out, and quite a num ber of other items have encircled us one at a time, until everybody’s life is hemmed in by restriction-., some having a larger dose than others. Yet we still go on. There is nothing else to do.

As you know, I’ve always had some remarks to make about the (conferring and accepting of honours, particularly by the workers. It is a great joy to think that Russia has none of this honours business as we know it. If I had the granting of honours I would bestow them for bravery, for sacrifice and for those who just go on. There’s many a halo earned by the “goers-on” of the earth; the women whose husbands are killed in the pit, the parents losing precious sons and daughters, faithful children nursing parents in old' age unto death —oh, lots and lots of great citizens whose lives have been confined to four walls and their only future one. of just keeping on. ,My thoughts have gone out to such citizens (and there are thousands of them in this world), and I have realised afresh that for all of us there is the steady plodding, the “keeping going,” no matter what happens to us and ours, and that is all we can do at the moment. Nevertheless, brain and mind can work. We can help in countless rays with post-war reconstruction plans, and these thoughts, these.mental efforts, are the tonic and the hope of the going-on days 'everybody is enduring. Blessings and thoughts to all who just keep going on. WASHERWOMAN.