TWENTY DAYS TO ENGLAND

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13491, 18 May 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

TWENTY DAYS TO ENGLAND

BY TOHCNGA. When the New. Zealander first went to stand on London Bridge and to gaze .in the happy midnight mood upon the lighted clock-face of St. Stephen's he felt himself to be a great traveller and a man who knew something of the world. He had tossed for months upon the stormy seas and lain for weeks frizzling in the doldrums. He had seen the Great Bear rise .slowly to the north as the Southern Cross sank as slowly behind him. He had faced danger and death ; had hungered for fresh food ; had longed with a great longing for the water springs ; had stepped ashore with flagging muscles and weakened iimbs. And between him and his colonial home by the semi-circle of the globe, the vast oceans across which labouring vessels slowly crept with much trimming of sail. And ' now they talk confidently of "twenty days to England;" of a run Home and back again in the mystic forty days ana forty nights ! And the grandson of the first New Zeaiander will be taking a little trip to London during the midsummer holidays, and will look with condescension upon the companion -who is doing it for the first! "I'll show you round," ho will say, as though he were talking of Rotorua. ." Not a bad place for a few days' spell London. A bit oldfashioned, you know, but, there's one shop there where you can get decent cigarettes." A marvellous change, this, if you come to think of it! The sea no langer separating; the continents no longer dividing; the round globe oecome verily a bit of a pea spinning through space. And Time mad© different. As Time is always being made different by the growth of the Ages and the circling of the years*. Time is possibly the fundamental thing; at least, it is one of the fundamental things —not the Time that affects the fulness of our lives. When a thousand . miles becomes like the other side of the hill, and a trip to London, or to Ottawa, like a week-end visit, we say that we have affected Distance, but, really we have enlarged Time. Men may never live to-be a thousand years old, but they may gain a thousand or ten thousand years for all that. They not only move more quickly, but by that moving live more quickly, and quickness of living, provided it amuses us, is the same as adding a length .o.our day 6 j And after all, mere length of days is nothing. One might "better be a man for half i. fleeting second than a torpid snake for a million years. - It's natural for us to say when we are tired that there is nothing in civilisation, and that we were just as happy when the i.stage-coach took a whole day to do forty ' miles, ■'; as we are now the express train can do twenty-four tunes forty miles in the time. .Which; isn't logical, because it confuses terms. A man is a great deal happier travelling to his, best girl at forty miles an hour than at forty miles a day, and would be happier still at forty miles a minuteprovided the pace did not affect his nerves,, or make him train-sick. And lif a man were, travelling to execution, pro- ! vided he was comfortable, lie would like to move not more than a yard a year and have ten thousand yards to go. If there is any pleasure In social;-- intercourse, in seeing the world, in renewing old associa-tions,-and in forming new ones, then the (faster Ave can the distance, ; without injuring our health,, the .: happier we must averageJy be.. ifov what is happiness but : the living to net: fullest• life that is' ours to live? .. " . ' ' ' . Health and happiness,,-by the way, are close kin,though not exactly the same. A martyr may find bis crowning happiness iat the . stake, "a profound.' before which the folly ol persecution, for con!science take, falls. shattered and slain yet we : cannot, therefore, * be generally happy when extremely warm. A lad with a good digestion or a girl who has "no sense of anatomy may occasionally believe, that the universe is one vast mistake, .but' it. is an absolute certainty that they. will bob back to happiness as promptly as 'a,flung cork bobs up to tue surface of a. stream. A man was inconceivably happier ~ with a sound liver, on an old-time wind jammer, that took six months' to London, than he can ever be, with a sluggish liver, on the . fastest liner that ever trailed its smoke against a following breeze. But, reverse ! the situation! Given health, strength, appetite, pleasure ahead, and love to come! back to, the ku-day London tripper needn't wish to change places with the Prince of Wales. ' , ' • ' -r : • ".' ; If we could only realise individually, : nationally,; publicly, privately, old and young, men, women, and children, that Health is at the basis' of general happiness, we should have reached at one stride halfway to the Millennial and should immei diately appreciate the possibilities of ' j human progress. Taken by and h large , I there is no material possession or recognition t which can compare with Health. It is more than Wealth, more than . Culture, more than Pomp and Power. With all reverence be it said that it is the supreme gift of God to those wnose ancestors have obeyed.His' laws and who themselves have not grievously offended. Until we realise and recognise this, until we insist that . nothing winch threatens Health shall be tolerated, and that nothing which favours it shall be overlooked, men and women will ask why they were born and we shall | all wonder occasionally what goo:! .is civilisation. . .- | So tluit when we go to compare the old times and the new tilings, We must assume the capacity of appreciation, the power of enjoyment, which appertains to j reasonable''Health. When we do this, we know that the inking together of the I lands is good, that the annihilation of Distance is good, that the shifting of the Time-standards whereby a man can do in a few years what once could not have been done in as. many centuries, is a- crowning good. Then we see the Earth made | small because Humanity is made great; we see the individual not shrunken out of sight but risen to be a giant among giants, a civilised man among civilised men. And so the great ships will soon be racing over the,vast sea that Captain Cook found desolate... racing to and fro as they weave the web and woof of the New Civilisation, knitting together into one nation those who without such weaving would inevitably fall apart. And to those whose hearts ache for the journey's end the Twenty Days will be still toe long ; and for those who shrink from the end, six months or six years would be just as much too short. But to those who can absorb the present and rejoice in the passing day—: those 'Twenty Days will be a panorama whose picture will lie stored for ever in grateful minds— of swelling seas and soaring mountains and stretching plains; of towns and farms and rivers and lakes and of settlement wherever settlement can be, and of a world that speaks English and is joined together in the bonds of Snood for the safety and freedom of the English-speaking men. And the New Zealand girl will wed the English lad—than which there is no greater tie between the old land and the hew. "That's all very well for the few," one may say: "but what about the multitude'.' Well, why shouldn't the multitude; travel? Why shouldn't we have popular excursions to : London and popular trips from London to the Hot Lakes? It >vill come. Perhaps not soon - enough for the first New Zeaiander who reached London Bridge to see, but, soon enough for the children of to-day to profit by it, it will be within the reach of any industrious New Zeaiander tc take - a holiday trip to London in Twenty Days.