CONTACT WITH INFINITE

Taranaki Daily News, 4 March 1933, Page 9

CONTACT WITH INFINITE

MAN DRIFTING AWAY. EMPLOYMENT AND LEISURE. Wellington, March 2. “There is a growing consciousness all over the world to-day that man is drifting too far away from spiritual realities, and losing the strength which flows from contact with the Infinite,” said the Gov-ernor-General, Lord Bledisloe, when opening the Karori Flower Show to-day. “Are we not perpetually reminded of this contact in a garden with Nature’s unsullied products around us, and is not that contact cemented with God and man at work in happy partnership in perfecting the former’s creative skill? “There is, too,” said his Excellency, “a growing impression among those who are using so freely the new American word ‘technocracy’—or the influence of the machine in creating unemployment—that by international agreement the working day or week will need to be shortened, leaving a larger proportion of it for leisure. But how is this leisure to be spent? And are we at present equipped in any class of life for its profitable enjoyment? If it is to be synonymous with idleness and self-indulgence it will wreck the civilisation of the world faster and more effectually even than the industrial stagnation which it seeks to cure.

“Again, such diversions as gardening, especially when backed up with all the fascinating scientific knowledge which is now brought to bear upon it, may prove vitally instrumental in solving this farreaching problem which these new industrial theories force upon our attention.”