ETHICS 0¥ HOLIDAYS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17984, 9 January 1922, Page 6

ETHICS 0¥ HOLIDAYS.

THE REWARD OF INDUSTRY. " SLACKERS " AND IDLERS. SUGGESTED PUNISHMENTS. An address on "The Ethics of Holidays" was given by the Rev. J. Lamb Harvey at St. Andrew's Chui-ch last evening. The principal, point emphasised was that only those who earn the right to holidays should be permitted to take them. The idlers and "slackers" were referred to in eaustio terms by the preacher. Quoting the saying: ''The. Church for ages, with more or less success, has been teaching men to pray; it should now feel also that it has to teach them to play," Mr. Harvey said the first rule for those who would enjoy a holiday was, "Deserve it." The idler and the "slacker" had no right to a holiday. Only the worker, and the diligent and cheerful worker, had earned tho right to release. People who did their work in a snappish and irritable, or surly and bad-tempered way, and civil servants who were uncivil, if they should not lose their holiday, should at least have some penance appointed Ihera. They should be orderod to give all the children on the beaoh "donkey-rides" on their backs every day, and keep smiling all the time; and they should be required to offer sincerely 20 times a day .Robert Louis Stevenlson's prayer: "Help im to play the man; help us to perform our duties with laughter and kind faces- Let cheerfulness abound with industry. Give us to go blithely about our business." Then, continued the preacher, there were the idle classes, the people who played all the time. They were more to be pitied even than those who worked all fie time- Let them have their holiday, therefore, on one condition—that they should be alone for a month, alone with Nature and a copy of Wordsworth, and themselves. Hie experience would be sufficiently trying to satisfy justice, and at the same time would be salutary and purifying. Respites Deserved and Undeserved.

"What about tho shirkers and the i 'slackers' who only shuffle through their work or scamp it!" asked Mr. Harvey. Employers said this class was numerous to-day, and schoolmasters said the same. He described it as the "anj-thing-will-do" class, who took no pride in their work, and put no conscience into it; who bungled and footled and forgot, their eye for ever on tho clock, wishing it were lunch time or closing time. Such people, tho preacher suggested, sho-jld be left at home, or in the othoe, or the workshop when the rest went away, and their friends should bombard them with picture postcards and snapshots depicting the delights of the seaside or the country. They should be made to do two people a work for a month and to do it thoroughly, and then if they had truly repented they might get a week-end in winter, as a favour Nobody who had anything to do with them would think the remedy too severe. But for the bulk of people their short respite from toil was only too wellearned, as their faces, stamped with the hurry and fret of our mad modern life, testified. Often in London, said Mr. Harvey, he had watched city workern looking at the enticing: posters with which enterprising railway companies placarded the hoardings—gorgeous pictures of sunny seas and golden sands, to which a brawny fisherman invites one, or along which a gouty eld gentleman waa flying, his gout forgotten in the tonic air; glowing visions of heathery moors and purple mountains; pressing invitations to travel to Bonnie Scotland by the best and fastest line, and to " take your holidays early this year." Begainlng Self-possession. And the hard-driven city man or the tired shop girl turned away with a sigh, to join once more the rush to the tube; Moorgate their only moor, and their only Strpd the one at Channg_ Cross. Let them not forget the pathetio multitudes who deserved a holiday but could not get it, and especially the mothers and children of the poor. Ta them the sea, the motors, the forests, the mountains would be like heaven—and were as unattainable. Nay, heaven they might join; but earth was denied them. Having deserved a holiday the next rule was to improvo it It was an extraordinary fact that many people did not know what to do with a holiday when they got it, spending it foolishly, aimlessly, vacantly, and returning with neither mind nor body refreshed, and almost as tired as when they went away. In holiday-making, as in other things, one man's meat was another man's poison, remarked Mr. Harvey, but tho rule for the city-dweller was, " Get back to nature—to the forces that heal and renew, tho tonics for the body, the balms for the mind, the baths of peaco for tho spirit," In tho rush of city life people too often lived on the surface of things; time for thought and reflection was denied them; they became strangers to their besj, solves, and to tho deeper things of life. The supreme purpose of a holiday should be to regain self-possession.