BUSH FIRES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19510, 14 December 1926, Page 12

BUSH FIRES.

Human lives lost, destruction of stock on a scale described as enormous, farms made desolate, towns threatened with extinction — these things make up the toll of the bush and grass fires still raging over a wide area in New South Wales. Every country has misfortunes to which it is peculiarly susceptible. Australia, wonderfully favoured in comparison with many other lands, has always had occasion to dread drought and fire more than anything else. New South Wales is now suffering a visitation from the swifter of the two disasters, that one which devours with a rush in startling contrast to the slow agony of a prolonged drought. In the long view the sweep of fire is counted as one of the risks to which rural industry must be exposed. When it arrives that philosophical reflection brings small comfort to the man who sees the fruits of a year's labour destroyed in a day, who sees assets gathered over a much longer term, with infinite toil and patience, consumed before his eyes. There have always been, in the Australian countryside, special powers of recuperation from these visitations. The people, too, have gained by experience the courage and endurance to start again after disaster. From the national point of view this saves the damage from being considered irreparable. Meantime it should not diminish in any degree the sympathy due individually to those who have been fighting a gallant but, in many places a losing, battle against the fires. New Zealand, exposed to other troubles, yet but little afflicted by those at present visiting New South Wales, should not be slow in extending neighbourly, and, if possible practical, sympathy to the people of New South Wales in the calamity which has befallen them.'