Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, TUESDAY, MAR. 11, 1924. “MY OWN SKYLINE.”

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16378, 11 March 1924, Page 2

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING GISBORNE, TUESDAY, MAR. 11, 1924. “MY OWN SKYLINE.”

Our owiii skyline; that which we can 1 see dimly; that, which wo aro aide to envisage as permanent', right, ygood, and in line with our own being, extends, it must toe confessed, blit a very little way. Time l and space are unaffected by the encroachments of our horizon. It has been said of Shakespeare that “time toiled after him in vain.’’ A glorious hyperbole but hopelessly indefensible. Time certainly would hot toil after any skyline of men, individually, or when (instituting Governments. A man, who shuts himself up in a. small room, cuts down his own horizon. He must escape at all costs, even though it be necessary, as it has been well said, “to lift off the roof.” This skyline of ours, is. after us, to extend into something wider, truer, greater. That too, when explored, in turn to spring from concept to concept, in a kind of infinite progression. The taking-off places, for each enlargement of human vision, connote the marks of the growth and expression of knowledge upon the earth. Just to linger on the holders of the mystery of time and space, in their relations to man, is not perhaps very useful. Blit even mysticism has its uses. To realise, even in some small degree, the certainty of the alternation and gradual progress of human cycles of experience, and knowledge, does assist in the promotion of patience with the decisions. hesitations, and weaknesses of men and Governments, which appear to us to bo wrong, and against our own, or the public interest. -Mr. Itainsay Macdonald is taking hold of the public imagination its a great idealist. Public opinion in Great Britain is rather tired of the older political schools and parties, who wiil not. recognise that the .s-hibbrd-ciths which served them well in the eighteenth century are dead, and only, if in existence at all. objects for reverent interment. A party, headed by an idealist, who means what ho teaches, and composed of fellow idealists, who are nut afraid to make mistakes, and hope to have time extended lc> them to live mere errors down, may find room to do good work in an old country, the Governments of which have become rather bankrupt of initiative. Mr. Macdonald, at the Albert Hall prior to the fall of the. late Government, proved himself to he an idealist of a high order. His modesty too was attractive. For tliet Labor party, about to assume olliee under quite unparalleled conditions, lie only claimed to bo taking one step. “Nineteen twenty-four is not the last in God’s programme of creation. My friends, wo will be dead and gone and forgotten, and generation after generation will come .... The ideal of a. great future w ill still be in front of our people. f sue no end, thank God, to those things. I see my own horizon. 1 see my own skyline, but 1 am convinced that when my children, or my children's children, get there, there will bo another skyline, another horizon, another dawning, another glorious beckoning from Heaven itself. That is my faith, and in that faith I go on.” There is certainly a marked change of tone shewn in the more recent English papers as regards the new Government. There is more tolerance. 'Some surprise at tlm moderation of Ministers. Relief, too, that the. elector;! I propaganda, of aggression againsf capital has been dropped. There appears to be a general wish, - that the Labor party should .got the knowledge and experience, which only responsible office, held for a uufliciciit time, could give! to it. It, is certainly destined to be the oflicial opposition for sumo lime after its present tenure of oflice fails. It is well if should learn what responsibility means and involves. The immediate skyline is adaptability to opportunity. If is borrowed from another Held, Jf is to be “all things to all men iu order to gain some.” If is useful sonietirnos to nwerse the process of looking ut qttr skyline. It is. a little like looking through binoculars at the wrong end. The distance backwards is enormously exaggerated. But that can be allowed for. iSttpposo (lie sky line to be one hundred yearA distant. "\Ve might see England a net.-work of mail couch routes, and a remarkable engine, tlie wonder of the day, capable of moving a small load upon rails, four miles an hour. Groat Britain then comprised a people very much shut up to themselves, except lor their Indian possessions. Nations as a rule stayed at home. A little over seventy years ago, England and France wt-a'e in alliance lighting ■ against Russia. Miseries, unimaginable • now. wore being endured by the small armies of that day caused by Die entire • absence of scientific knowledgo as applicable to licit! surgery, or (o what ■ now aro commonplaces in sanitary law. i Or if the horizon is put farther back, we } may geo Bppe Gregory, whose sympathies worn apeuftmtary enlisted on behalf of a. 1 few whit.g-,faced siavo 'boys exposed for 1 sale in the-market' place of liome, sending a monk to preach the gospel to ' Anglo-Saxon tribes that were at the ■ I into barbarians. This in how Gregory ' himself wrote to a friend about it: —• “The English .rr.ee. citvatcd in the far 1 corner of the world (gens Angiorum in ■ mandi angnln posit,a). has hitherto re- ■ inaiued in unbelief, worshipping .stocks j and stones, but aided by your prayers I

made ' up my mind (it was God vTo prompted me) to send n monk iff my own monastery to them to preach .... and now letters have just arrived telling us of his safety and of his work At Christmas last more than ton thousand English people, we arc informed, were baptized by our brother and fe'-c Bishop.” The rapid advance of civilised conditions t hroughout I lie w orld is explained by the fart that modern science has. placed the discoveries made during the last fifty years at. the command of ail peoples, irrespective of na-tiQuality. The thickly populated Bast is coming into its own. It is overtaking, the* West. Power always swings to the large pojnilaitions—with the capacity to become armed battalions. Reform of national conditions, which in the seventeenth, and oven tlio olgHitPHnth centuries, would require hundreds of yarn's to bring about is being accomplished now in a single gen ora tit ,u. Without Die adoption of some ameliorating solvent, making for righteousness, the world skyline is at least- threatening.