Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, SATURDAY, SEPT. 4, 1926. "AS THE SHADOWS LENGTHEN"

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 17130, 4 September 1926, Page 4

Poverty Bay Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, SATURDAY, SEPT. 4, 1926. "AS THE SHADOWS LENGTHEN"

•Mr. Rudyard Kipling has been' honored by the Royal Society of Literature. He has been the recipient of the Society's gold medal, which is given in acknowledgment of distinguished services to literature. Mr. Kipling, at the presentation ceremony, made a happy speech, which was an eulogy rather than a defence of fiction. "Fiction" he claimed to be "Truth's eldest sister." The reason for this priority was that "no one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story." He acclaimed "fiction" as "the oldest of the arts, the mother of history, biography, philosophy, and, of course, of politics." The address was a masterly vindication of the life-work of the novelist and poet, but what will be of more general interest were his scarcely-veil-ed glimpses of introspection, in view of the approaching evening light, "as the shadows lengthen on the blotting pad," and his recognition of the vast amount of every man's work that is flung upon the world's rubbish heap, not so much that all was unworthy, as that it was not good enough—not better than the best, already done brothers. "The utmost a writer can hope is that there may survive of his work a fraction good enough to be drawn upon later, to uphold or embellish some ancient truth restated, or some old delight reborn." Literature, architecture, philosophy, even human life itself, all are countinuous in time, but the individual men, who preserve, and add to, the continuity, pass away, and only a few immortals are remembered by succeeding generations. Humanity revolts against this relentless merger of the present in the past: it puts up its memorials in marble and granite: it inscribes the triumphs of the passing heroes in its temples and shrines: it is till vanity; time laughs, ami antiquarians -turn over the.dust heaps of the world, digging deep to discover ancient writings and urns long since forgotten. It does seem that whatever efforts a man may make to make his work more perfect, and to serve his day and generation in loyalty and truth, each passing day is bringing him nearer to the turning point, when the shadows will lengthen, and, so far as personal effort can go, in this world, ' finis" must be written up. Mr. Kipling, who already sees tin shadows beginning to lengthen, and to weigh what he has done in the light of what he had intended to do, is one of the succession of authors celebrated in the 90's, whose names are passing out of memory. Going a little further back the Spectator recently called for a competition, and offered a prizo for a list of the seven greatest Victorians —not necessarily authors. Tliere must have been many hundreds of competitors. The popular award gave the first seven in this order: William Ewart Gladstone, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Florence Nightingale, Lord Bcaconslield, Thomas Carlyle. The votes ranged front 817 in the case of Mr. Gladstone to 350 in the case of Mr. Carlyle. The Church fared badly. Out of the first twenty there is neither Anglican nor Nonconformist. Cardinal Newman came 19th, with 76 votes, and the late General Booth 20th, with 75 votes. The peculiar circumstances, under which a man is called upon to do his day's work, appear to affect public estimation more than does the actual value of the work done. Such a competition is not a measure of greatness, but only of its reputation. It may still bo true that the world knows" nothing of its greatest men. The peculiar circumstances, national conditions affecting the public and private life of the people, and the degree of eclat which attached to the workei in his day, all work together to augment and preserve the public estimation of the man, to a greater extent than does the actual value of what he has done. Two remarkable instance? of this are shown in this competition. Florence Nightingale comes fifth on the list with 561 votes and Lord Lister Sith with 358 votes. It is no disparagement to tho work of a noble lady, which was begun amidst the crue; neglect of surgical, and even of sanitary science, in the hardships of the Crimean war, to say.that the work'ol Lord Lister, the discoverer of the anti septic treatmenty of surgery, which has reduced suffering, and saved tin lives of hundreds of thousands of men —probably many more than were engaged on both sides in the Crimea, was greater than the work of Florence Nightingale, great as was her work, and great, as has been, the force of her example. We will take one more case. General Gordon is 12th with 204 votes, while Lord Roberts is only 18th with 79. General Gordon was a martyr to political dilitarinoss; his personal merits were great; his enthusiasms quite beyond normal bounds. Lord Roberts "by his energy and skill did much to consolidate the British rule in India: he will rank in history as one of England's foremost soldiers and patriots; The first impression of such a view r as to the impormaneuce of the individual life, and the rapidly diminishing value of its work, is depressing. If men at work were always on the look out for the slanting of the shadows as they lengthen, the quality and quantity of their work would suffer. Happily men are so constituted ami the -animal life is so vigorous, that It is only, after the shadows have become seriously elongated, that a man wakes up to the fact that his work is near to its end, and that his place will soon be taken by another. If we look for some reasonable explanation for the diminishing value of individual effort, however brilliant, and the rapid succession of noble lives who live and work and pass away, for the most pari forgotten, having added immensely to. the knowledge and wealth of the world thev have served so well, and yet in which they have played their part foi so short a time, wo should expect to fin! it in the discovery of some taw ot involuntary sacrifice of the individual for the race. As the shadows lengthen, towards the close of the individual life, we might"expect to see, and indeed do see, more light breaking out for the better preservation and improvement of the race. There can be no doubt but that there has been in the history of quite modern days a great improvement in human conditions. It has been a puzzle to many serious students of social science how it is, that, contrary to what would have been ■ expected, this improvement has not had more effect in the. decrease of class bitter-

Jtess and individual unrest. The answer is perhaps that the worker of the day does not compare his circumstances with what they would have been, if ho had lived fifty or a hundred years ago, but, by the contrast that is under his own observation, when he looks out upon the man of means in itie rather ostentatious use of those means, ami compares the condition of himself and his working comrades, and their few and more modest pleasures. It is hard to tell how a law arises, and can be deduced, from living conditions, but it.-; presence may he at least guessed at from the cumulative results obtained, through the passing of the years. Egyptian civilisation was built upon the sacrifices of the individual lives that made it possible. Greece, and Rome, similarly rose and fell. All those past civilisations knew nothing as we know it of the freedom of the individual: in all of them-the workers were for the most part just serfs, if not slaves. There does seem then to be a law, that, in the building up of succeeding civilisations, the individual has to see the shadows iengthen in order that the race may survive. If the converse is considered, the necessi-y for such a law becomes probable. If the individual lives only for himself, the struggle for life must end in chaos and annihilation. It is the same with the organisations of classes, 3i' sections cf the people, aiming at the supremacy of the interest ot of the class. In aiming at class or sectional supremacy the goal may bo missed in the ruins of the whole. The privilege of sacrifice may fail to appeal to the individual, but may we not take some comfort from what is seen In Nature's operations in which renewal of life always seems to followon the heels of apparent, death. As the shadows lengthen, may not man look tor an opportunity to complete his work in the morning.