HUMANITY’S FUTURE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 48, Issue 2886, 29 March 1939, Page 8

HUMANITY’S FUTURE

LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS BISHOP BARNES’S BROADCAST “Myself and Life” was the subject of a broadcast address by Dr. Barnes, sed the possibility. of receiving messages from living creatures on other planets.

When he sat quietly and reflected,

he said, he was ever trying to see human life more clearly against the infinite background of time and space which modern science had revealed.

He knew that he was almost ludicrously insignificant, but he believed that there was a purpose in the process that had produced man. We need not be as men without hope.

“When my earthly life is ended,” he continued, “shall I know or care for those whom I have known and loved, for the country which bred me? I hope that the answer is ‘Yes.’ “I hope that my soul will live on, struggling in comradeship, with others for a perfection and a glory that are past words. If not —well, it is good to have lived; even though life has been but a fitful pursuit of higher things, a blundering search for truth. Marconi’s Search He believed that there was purpose in the process that had produced man: that there was a God in whose mind the purpose existed. He believed that man’s soul had been created as part of a plan whereby all souls in the universe made for the greater glory of the Creator.

It could not be true that the earth was the only planet on which life existed.

“On other planets or other stars there must be consciousness; on them there must be beings with minds, some of which presumably are far more developed than our own,” he* continued. “Wireless messages from such remote conscious being must be possible. In fact, the only time I met Marconi he told me of his search for such messages. 'So far we have failed to find them.

“Doubtless dissatisfaction will always remain,” he concluded. “The Golden Age will ever recede. I would not have it otherwise. Was not Stevenson right when he said that ‘to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive’?”

Righty cigarettes a day! M. Aristide Briand, “the strong man of French Politics,” smoked 80 cigarettes a day—and lived to be old. Yet the enemies of the weed will insist that smoking, even in moderation, shortens life! ‘But t that depends on the tobacco. The famous Frenchman’s favourite blend must have been of exceptional purity to admit of his indulging so freely. Because brands there are plenty, which it would be simply suicidal to smoke to that extent owing to the quantity of nicotine they contain. Tobacco absolutely free from nicotine is unknown, but our N.Z. brands are not far off the mark. The toasting they are subjected to at the factory accounts not only for their comparative freedom from nicotine, but for their peculiarly delicious flavour and unequalled aroma. They do not, be it noted, affect the heart, and are the only toasted tobaccos. That they possess an irresistible attraction for smokers is proved by their extensive sale. There are onlyfive toasted brands: Riverhead Gold, Desert Gold, Cut Plug No. 10, Cavendish, and Navy Cut No. 3. But ’ware of imitations!

Perhaps there was something to be said for a little “cleverness” that was not twenty years too late.