ALIEN’S LETTER FROM ENGLAND

Otago Witness, Issue 3188, 21 April 1915, Page 64

ALIEN’S LETTER FROM ENGLAND

February 17. First, I must thank several Witness readers for letters, with appreciative words, which the mail has brought me, and which, coming on a “grey day” of personal experience, : are ‘‘gimblet holes that let the glory through,” as the child said of the stars. If I could answer aright, even to myself, the problems of Life and Death which these letters present, it would mean that the gteat riddle of the universe would be answered, and answered the inner mystery of mysteries pain. One of the unanswerable questions was written to me from the porch of the little church of Governor’s Ray. Lie peacefulness of this part of the bay is past me in describing, ’ says the wiitei. “And the aroma of the grasses and native shrubs is intoxicating. No wind; and omy the twittering of goldfinches.and_ sparrows and the occasional whistle of a nitive bird. “Peace, perfect peace.” But —alas htes inevitable “but!—“what turmoil xnd awful horrors are distributed the world around. . . . Life seems to me to^be more full of sorrows than of joys. Why so? Is it because things do not go as we would desire them, or is it because we do not put sufficient trust in our Heavenly Father?” Neither the one nor the other. At least, so I have answered the question to myself. It is the law of cause and effect, the; law of the creator, and it is only so far as we are one with the law Divine—which is physical as well as spiritual, mental as well as emotional; only so far as we ourselves, that is, our heredity, environment, understanding and soul are working with the Divine will and law which is growth and accomplishment —so only are we happy. In fbe seed of a plant, in the handful of dust, we have the whole epitome of life and the world. Cause and effect. You may plant the acorn under most adverse circumstances to the buffeting of the four winds of heaven. It may come up stunted and twisted, a poor specimen of the giant of the forest; but it is the offspring of the acorn still. And the thistle may grow a most exquisite bloom. In the handful of dust are a million life particles and creatures, recreating life, redistributing force, each particle dependent on and revivifying the other. “But, asks my correspondent, “ what of resolves ? Of what purpose do we resolve ! If God s hand is above us do they alone uplift us? Do they help us on?”' Our resolves do not alone uplift us, but they certainly do help us, for they are the quickening oi the will that leads to action. Without the resolve to cross it we should always remain this side of the ditch. If at the start of our life we had the knowledge which maturity ‘ gives, we might ciraw up a code of our individual needs of body and estate. But to begin with, we doffiiot know our selves, not even the possibilities and limitations of our own bodies, much less the possibilities and limitations of our minds and souls; and by the time we know ourselves the good and evil are so intermixed in our experience that we could not remove one part without destroying the other. And unmaking ourselves and unlearning ouiselve's (for what we do know it is our own living that teaches) is impossible. How, then, are we to divide what we believe good from what we call evil, for everything is double? If we had never suffered loneliness how could we understand companionship? If there had been no test of his faith, how should we possess a faithful friend ? The generous giver does not lose that his gift was uuappieelated or misapplied—the good was his own benevolence which warmed and widened his heart. Happiness and prosperity are relative, and are a matter of temperament and assimilation as well as circumstance. A full stomach is contentment to the hog among filth; the student possesses the world in a garret with his books; a paradise of beauty would nail on a musician, without harmony, and a world full of music and no colour would bore the landscape 2 :>a i n f ei ’- If we believe that the Divine will and end, the destiny of the soul, progress to ultimate good, then we must believe that life is a working out, a working towards that good; and every rrood in thought, emotion, feeling, act, fn deed or faith, is another step and strength towards the destined ' goal. That circumstance or mistake makes difficult or misnames the path by which we go, and takes us a long way round from God s croal of good, does not alter the fact that the goal is there. And that instinct that we ought to be happy, ought to attain, ought to be blessed, seems to me like the instinct of the worm that eats its way through the entombing darkness to thesurface light. One of the cleanest, sweetest, most noble and toilsome lives I have known—and one of the loneliest—was that of a man who gave all he was and had of genius and time to leave the world a little better than he found it—because he believed this world was all. “Ah I” he said to me once, “if only I could believe that fife went on; that all man’s thoughts and possibilities matured —what happiness 1 How a Christian can grieve if he believes in his ultimate and everlasting realisation of knowledge as well as joy, passes my comprehension!” “The years teach much that the days never know,” says one to whom experience gave wisdom. “The art of life has a prudency, and will not be exposed. Every, man is an impossibility until he is born; everything is' impossible until we see a success. The ardours of piety agree at last with the coldest scepticism—that nothing is of us, all is of God. Nature will not spare us the smallest leaf of laurel* All writing comes by the grace of God,

(Specially Written for the Ladies' Page.)

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS,

( and all doing and having. .... l ean see nothing at last in success or failure than more or less of vital force supplied | from the Eternal. The results of hie are I uncalculated and incalculable. The years . teach much which the days never know. | The persons who compose our company j converse, and come and go, and design i and execute many things, and somewnat I conies of it all, but an unlocked for re- ! suit. . . . Something is done; all are 1 a little advanced, but the individual is mistaken.” i And if we are mistaken in our conception of our individual happiness and success ; if the common good has been a little advanced by our patience, or courage, or labour, or skill, although it is something different from what ‘we set out to do and what we promised ourselves, the result is there. And of your loss, count what you have rained —knowledge and sympathy from suffering, strength in a loneliness, courage in the storm; to the blind is given intuitive sight; the deaf are shut off from discord; separation keeps the ideal of your friend alive where daily knowledge might rob you. The child may not give back the care of his own parent, but gives it on to his own child. Gain of life does not consist in the evasions or escapes of its trials, but in the strength with which we boar them. And in the dav when we can believe nothing, trust nothing, hope nothing, do nothing, then are we dead. The picture my correspondent drew of the beautiful New Zealand bay and its summer morning, with the accompanying sprig of manuka scrub, recalled the scene. The evening of just such a morning there I wrote of 20 years ago: “The clear, piping notes of the birds after their day of song were softer and less imperative. They had traversed the air and were glad to turn nestward. The breeze that had blown fitfully was lulled to a whisper, odorous with" the perfumes that its wandering had brought from afar. The flowers themselves, now that the sunlight had departed, like generous memory poured out their full fragrance. Nothing was silenced or blotted out —only subdued. . . . Rest —rest and an indefinable peace were diffused around. Death and stagnation were nowhere; but with the fading light and mystery , of cloud it seemed as though heaven and earth were intermingled, so that it w r as impossible to tell which was of land and which was of sky. The bee came from the clover-field laden with honey. The cows were standing at the byre with their udders full of. milk. The labourer had earned his wage; the peach had gained a richer bloom; the harvest field had taken 1 on a deeper gold. ‘ Accomplishment’ was Nature’s in the evening.” | And so many evenings of life answer the problems of the day. ! Other questions of interest are suggested by different correspondents. An old reader of the Witness writes: “ It must be a great experience to be in EngTand at this historic time. . . . Sometimes I think people here do not adequately realise how much is at stake and how much need the Empire has of all the- help any of us can give. I regret that so manv free and fit to go to the scenes of conflict do not deem it their duty to do so. Some I know went off like a shot, but others just as dutybound are holding back. It is a dreadful thought that so many men have been sacrificed, and so many more still will be sacrificed, while others with quite as much business to be there are saving their own skins. I daresay for the most part the sacrifice is heroic and willing; but why should so many suffer and die for the Empire and for us and others stay at home at ease?” i That is the question of the hour here, too. -And it is just because at all times in all places since the world began there are some ready to give and others who take the offerings as their due. New Zealand in men and money, in women and their service, is responding generously and gallantly in common with the Empire to the call of the Empire’s need; but as- “things seen are mightier than things heard,” the immunity from the tragedy of war—from its sights and sounds —must of necessity mitigate against a romtant poignant realisation. The spirit is the same when it is touched and stirred ; but the eye and the ear and association with facts are very potent aids . to comprehension. “ It is strange what added interest a little personal acauaintance with victims or participants in the : great struggle gives one,” truly remarks my correspondent. Yes; and men and women who fully realbe how magnificently , men and women are living and dying for ; a cause are ashamed to fret and carp i over little personal ills, or weight the | spirit of those who need their strength , with anything short of the dire necessity. I Men grumblers get short sympathy. “ Well, whv don’t yon go to the war?” If the civilian’s lot isn’t 'good enough, there’s the chance! If England is dei feated, it is defeat of Empire also. The I Empire is fighting for its'own life with I the fight for England’s life. The senti- ! mentality about the Motherland is passing ■ with the realisation that the chicks of , the old hen are safest under her wings, j Self-respect and self-interest have joined forces in the united (Empire, and not a soul of us has a right to sleep comfortably on a British bed who has done nothing to aid the national cause. Every man is not called upon to fight, but every man and woman of the nation can do something towards the fight, and the majority are doing their best. We shall come out of the war wiser than we went in, both we and the world, 1 and those of us who reinherit British ! privileges will owe them to those who | prized our heritage as a nation more than

their own life. The Empire that is at stake is larger than we always remember. To think imperially is sometimes an effort. When we say “ Empire ” we do not always in our tnoughts include the interests y£ the accumulated British possessions. According to the .Referee, “If the Germans were to win the war, wards of Britain would be plundered, exploited, ravished, and flogged in the Indian Empire, Ceylon, tlie Straits Settlements, I ederateci Malay States, Sarawak, the other Malay States, Hongkong, Wei-hai-wei, North Borneo, Brunei, Cyprus, Cape Province, Natal, Transvaal, Orange Free State, Basutoland Bechuanaland, Rhodesia, Gambia, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Northern Nigeria, Southern Nigeria, Somaliland, East Africa, Uganda, Zanzibar, Nyasaland, Egypt, Sudan, Mauritius, Seychelles, Ascension, St. Helena, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, British Columbia, Manitoba. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories, Newfoundland, Jamaica, Bahamas, Leeward Islands, Windward Islands, Barbados. Trinidad and Tobago, British Guiana, British Honduras, Bermuda, Falkland Elands, South Georgia, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania, Western Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua, and the Pacific Islands.” Yes, it is interesting to live in England at the present time; but, like most of the interesting things, it is not the easiest. The strain is tightening, but a wide interest and outlook take our eyes ’off our own small boundary-fence. The discussion in the House last week in re the condition of England’s larder brought no promise of cheaper food. Mr Asquith’s view was that we should be thankful things are no worse. The statement was that food had risen in price during the last few weeks in London 23 per cent., in the other large towns 22 per cent., and in smaller towns 21 per cent. Some of the reasons given were the raised freights of ships, the shortage of men at the docks, railways (and with coal), the shortage of men to handle the goods, the cutting off from various places of the full supplies of flour and other imported goods, and the increased appetite of the nation, the feeding of the vast army (which includes hundreds of thousands of additional men from the Empire over), the waste of w r ar, and the fact that many of the soldiers’ wives and children have more money to spend on food than in peace time; also that in many of Hie manufacturing centres that are supplying the war needs the people are earning more money and eating more food. There is to be no Government control of the market at present and so the burden falls, as it always falls, upon those whose means are the most straitened. And at the present time this is not confined to the “ labouring classes.” The artistic workers and those whose small income has failed because of the wmr are the greatest sufferers. The menu in these homes is under revision. I Mr Churchill’s confidence in the power of the British navy, I may reply, in answer to a correspondent, is great and unshaken. He gave an enthralling review in the House of Commons yesterday of the accomplishments of the fleet, and showed that everything that the navy had done so far had been soundly and well done. The belief was expressed that pressure would compel the German Emperor to risk his navy in a sea fight, and then w 7 e might expect another Trafalgar. The tadcs which lie before us are anxious and grave 'on the sea and on land. “The scuttling at sea,” said the Lord of the Admiralty, “ the sinking at sight of merchant ships by .submarine agency, is a wholly novel and unprecedented departure. There will be losses, of that I give you full warning. But, on the other hand, the reply that we shall give will nob be wholly ineffectual. Germany cannot be allowed to adopt a system of wholesale murder. So far, however, we have not attempted to stop the imports of food. We have not prevented neutral ships from trading direct with German ports. We have allowed German exports in neutral ships to pass unchallenged. Sir, the time has come when the enjoyment of those immunities bv a State which has, as a matter of deliberate policy, placed herself outside all international obligations must be reconsidered.”