THE BEST IS YET TO BE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18849, 11 April 1931, Page 8

THE BEST IS YET TO BE

A “TIMES’* LEADER, “In computing our assets for meeting the huge demands which the near future must make of us,“ says “The Times,” “it is not the material factors alone that we should take in to our reckoning. Far more important in the end than our fiscal system or our trade resources is the character of our people. "How will an impartial estimate appraise it to-day? It has features which are obviously disquieting—lowered morality, impatience of discipline, neglect of religion, and others which are commonly quoted. Yet against them may be set other facts, less immediately perceptible As yet, but oi real encouragement. Some of the worst reactions of the post-war period are manifestly approaching their end. Even within the last i.2 months there has been a notable movement among the younger arid most modern artists and writers towards sanity and decency. “What matters even more is that this return is welcomed by the public. is shown by the fact that the decedent products of a disordered epoch are beginning to lose their vogue. Competent observers, again, report a perceptible improvement in the attitude of the younger generation towards religion, especially at the universities. The pose of indifference is no longer regarded as proof of intellectuality. “Certainly among the general public as those who conduct a newspaper have special opportunities of judging, the interest shown in religious topics to-day is not only very considerable, but has definitely increased within the last year or two. All these facts may seem mere straws, yet they seem Lo indicate that the wind has changed and has begun to blow again from the right direction. “There is no real ground for despondency about our national character to-day ,though the need of improvement is evident enough. Perhaps no other one quality is so much to be desired as reawakened sense of individual responsibility. “111-judged actions both of Church and of State have gone far to destroy it in modern times. The Church has been so anxious to accentuate its corporate nature that many people have come to imagine that membership in a believing body is an adequate substitute for individual oelief, with its correlatives of individual effort and self discipline. “There can be little need to point out how the corresponding error in civil life has been fostered by mod- ! ern legislation. As the result, multitudes still visualise the State as an organisation equiped with limitless funds, the right employment of which is to release ail citizens from doing anything positive for themselves or families. ‘‘Sturdy Individualism.** “We have good reason for including among our New Year’s wishes a rebirth of that sturdy individualism which over many centuries distinguished the inhabitants of this country. Our domestic problems will not (?o within measurable distance of solution until the average citizen passes from the stage of saying ‘Something must be done’ to that of saying ‘I must do something.’ “No easy optimism is possible, as [on this first day of 1931, we survey the world with its disorder, with its staggering difficulties, with its portent of an agonised campaign against belief In God. Yet the fullest candour in admitting ugly facts should not blind us to others of a very different kind, and certainly should not lessen the courage with which we face the time to come. They are wise who relate the temporal with the eternal. They believe that every human effort for good is reinforced by a power more than human, and they do not forget what deliverance was wrought for us Uf the years of war.

“Certainly the world as we find it to-day is a gross failure if it were designed merely as a scene of human enjoyment. But there is comfort in the larger view that this world is merely part of a larger scheme, that it is no more than the training-ground where, by effort and suffering and failure and yet more effort, we are meant to fit ourselves for fuller life and larger tasks elsewhere. “To those who hold this view the final vicory of good over evil, of love over hate, of life over death, is always certain. They can endure as seeing Him who is invisible. They can wait, as many on the farther side of death are waiting for them. Let this or any year bring what it may, they can look forward. The best is yet to be.”

“It will be life and death for the naion for many a day that at least there shall be no increase of the vast total of our expenditure,” says Mr J. L. Garvin, in the “Observer.” “Whatever Government may be in power at the end of this year, it will be a disgrace to the whole party-sys-tem if Unemployment Insurance has not been purified. The dole is used more and more as a marriage endowment; it is used by many employers as an indirect substitute for wages; it is grossly abused in many other ways; and the demoralising perversion of the whole system is now the most glaring scandal of its kind in the world.

“All of us are going to be in the thick of it in 1931. No party can escape crucial decisions. No single party without a solid majority of the people behind it can put the nation on a sound footing. The great awakening of the country has not come as soon as we hoped 12 months ago. But we believe that it is coming, that it will be more formidable the longer It is delayed, and that the results will make this stern New Year one of the turning points for good in our annals.”