TINNED RELIGION

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 234, 15 September 1934, Page 6

TINNED RELIGION

Life Is Adventure

GERMAN SAILOR’S PHILOSOPHY Hastings Rotary Address A remarkable address was given to Hastings Rotarians at their luncheon yesterday by Mr. George Dibbern, the German seafarer who has spent four years wandering over the world in his 32-foot yacht, Itunanga. Not only is Mr. Dibbern’s English fluent and exact, but his language is embellished with most beautiful imagery, and almost everything he says is accompanied by exquisitely descriptive gestures which cannot be put into words, but which gave a most telling effect to his address. His philosophy is that nothing matters but love; that death is nothing, and life a great and wonderful adventure; and there is beauty in everything if one will only seek it. lie spoke of many things—the loveliness and the fun of a storm at sea, bringing up children, the cowardliness of hugging to security, and the need of religion in every moment ul living. the world was tilled with tinned -oods, lie said, and it appealed that : even religion hud been put in tins, the Bible appeared to be looked upon as something that should be opened only on Sundays. The Sabbath came, and out came the tin-opener to open the Bible. “It is better to go to church once in ten years so long as we go with a good heart,” he said, "than to go every Sunday just because the tin has to be opened.” The following are some other points in his philosopny : — WHAT IS THE DEPRESSION? Britain led the world in two great ways—ru her system of justice by which a man was innocent until he was proved guilty, and m free trade. "In Germany, he said, “it is different. fl 1 am arrested 1 am at once a criminal, and 1 must prove myself to be innocent.” We must have laith in children. They are created above us, and olteu we cannot understand what is above us. We try to put them below us and to rule them, although they are our superiors. We should teach them to be “self-respecting, sell-reliant, and self-expressive, to build up bravely, to think fairly, and to love warmly. “Go with your child through all the sins in the world, and lead trim up to an understanding ol the wisdom of goodness. When he has seen a little of badness, he will learn that fire is a good thing to warm yourself at, but that it burns if you go too close to it.” “1 went sailing in my little boat in search ot mysell, and 1 lound love. 1 wanted to find my boundaries, and to push them out wider.” “What is the ‘depression’? It is life. The only terrible thing is the same old thing dragging along and dragging along in the same way day. after day.” “Men want to be knights again, to get out on the roads to fight for things worth fighting for, to wrestle, to strive, to rescue, and not to be just general providers and bottle-washers in the home.” “Is there death? Where is death? There is none. Why should 1 be afraid? If I am alive I needn’t be afraid, and if I am dead I can't be. So that settles that problem.” “WELL, I AM DEAD.” Mr. Dibbern told his audience that after the war be found life in Germany cramped and narrow, Lite was organised like a machine, and the air was too thin to breathe. He becanie spiritually suffocated. It was by a stroke of luck that his yacht came into his possession through the insolvency of his partner, and at last he set off with two companions. He asked his wife what she would do if he were dead, and she answered that she supposed she would just have to igo on in ths same way. “Weil, then, I am dead,® he' answered. (Mr. Dibbern made it very clear during his speech that he anil his wife are still in love with each other.) He wanted to be free for a while, and he cut himself away from every old association. “I was even dead in my pocket,” he said, “for 1 hadn’t a bean.” Luck turned up, however, and his seafaring companions provided a little money. The yacht was a primitive affair with old sails, and without a chronometer and other necessary fittings. For 42 hours he was hove-to in a storm in the Bay of Biscay. It was tremendous, and words could not describe it. However, ho and his companions kept up their spirits by playing the accordeon. “We thought that if'there was to be a funeral, it might as well be a happy one,” he said. After the storm was over they went up on deck and, squaring their shoulders, they cried out: "Can’t you blow harder than that?” “Just then the spray dashed over us, and we decided we had better not talk so loud.”

Air Dibbern ended his address by saying he hoped tor the day when every school and university would have its boat. “The spirit of the sea,” he said, “is very different from the spirit of the land." He thought it would not bi' long beloro universities would rig out sailing ships and send their last-year students around the world as a part of their education. Money could not be invested in any better wav. he said.

Mr. Dibbern, who lived in New Zealand for 10 years before the war, intends to take part in the trans-Tasman yacht race.