WISDOM WHILE YOU WAIT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11282, 9 January 1915, Page 8

WISDOM WHILE YOU WAIT.

PLAYING THE GAME. Two great principles are at work in this war. On the one side, there is a great machine of blood and iron—a wonderful ma-chine, well found in all its parts, which is intended to crush any "kind of opposition; while, on the other side, there is a smaller machine that is not a machine, but a small team of players, playing the game lor thenside. In 'soldiering; and war, it has been said, there are four " O's " which go to make up the true soldier -courage, common-sense, cunning and cheerfulness. One of the two sides to-day is fighting with the first three only of those " C's." Our side is also playing with the fourth "o"—cheerfulness : wo ai\> fighting in the right spirit. knowing; that wo are fighting on the right sicle, and will win in the end.— Sir Robert Baden-Powell. V VOICES ON THE WAR. No one in all this Empire desired this war; few in all this Empire will flinch now that war has como. —Sir Gilbert Parker. The less the map of Europe is altered, the less of human suffering, the less of human passiou and hatred we shall bequeath to the generations that oro to como after us.—Jeronio K. Jerome. No work is nobler or more beneficent than the creation of a national temfier at once calm, enduring, and resoute.—The Right Hon G. W. E. Russell. Have no illusion. We art? dealing with a strong and magnificently-equip-ped enemy, whose avoweu aim is our complete destruction.—Mr Rudyard Kipling. This is the greatest war, beyond all comparison, the world has ever seen.— Lord Ilosebery. It is the worst of policy to belittle an enemy.—Mr William Archer. This is quite a different sort of war from any that hare come before it. At the end there Avill be no conference of Europe on the old lines at all, but a conference of the world.—H. G. Wells.

We axe fighting for the dignity of humanity. Wo are fighting for tho right of civilisation to continue to exist. We are fighting so that nations may continue to live in Europe without being under the heel of another nation. —M. Clemenceau.

V WHAT ABOUT TO-DAY?

Wo shall do so much in the years to

come, But what have we clone to-day? We shall give our gold in a princely

6Um > , o But what shall we give to-day? We shall lift the heart and dry the

tear, We shall plant a hope in the place or

fear, We shall speak the words of love and

cheer, But what did we speak to-day?

Wo shall be so kind in after a while, But what have we been to-day? We shall bring to each lonely life a smile, But what have we brought to-day ? We shall give to truth a grander birth, And to steadfast faith a deeper worth. We shall feed the hungering souls of earth, But whom have we fed to-day? V

DANGEROUS FRIENDS. Francis Bacon quotes these words from some Italian writer: "Man is commanded to forgive his enemies. Nowhere is imposed on him the far more difficult task of forgiving his friends." And yet it is probable that our friends do us more harm than our enemies. An enemy never persuaded ai young man to drink,or to gamble, or to tread the "primrose" path. An enemy never persuaded a young man to squander his valuable time ,or to waste his opportunities. An enemy never ruined a fellow-man with unearned praise. We must gua/rd against the assaults of our friends. We must be cautious lest their invitations and solicitations and flatteries win us away from the soldier life. Among the choicest gifts of God to man are friends, and these friends we ought always to cherish. But we must also remember that these very friends sometimes do us more harm than do our enemies. *„#

WAR NEWS. Will it come with a note of cheer? Will it come with a wail of woe? The word that we next may hear, Will it hearten our hope or our fear With success of friend or of foeP Will it tell of victory won At a cost of carnage—how great? What deeds of valour were done, What risks of defeat were run, For the honour and life of the State ? The World with its loud acclaim Hails the hero who wins the fight, And' high on the scroll of Fame With names of victors his name In gilded letters will write. But ah I for the field that we gain To our foe a field must be lost; For the joy of triumph there's pain, For the sunshine of glory there's rain Of tears to balance the cost. —lsaac Bassett Choate. ••* A LOVE-LETTER TO ALL MANKIND. Riohter said of someone that " in his seventy-second year his face is a thanksgiving for his former life, and a love-letter to all mankind." There you have the universal charity of religion. A love-letter to all mankind will never beam like sunshine from the face of the Kaiser; he has made up hi 3 mind to frown upon the earth, and his message to mankind is a perpetual summons to an everlasting court-martial. —Harold Begbie. # JOY. "To miss the joy is to miss it all," says Robert Louis Stevenson, writing of life. He had learned, to find joy in almost impossible places, to make it out of the scantiest and most promising materials, and there are many with abundance of all sorts of material at command who never learn from without except as it is transmuted into this precious substance by a divine alchemy within. All the world and every day of life is full of the raw material, but within the soul lies _ the wonderful agent that makes it joy. * * • * THINGS AND PEOPLE. Very few of us are evenly balanced between things and people. All women, for instance have a permanent list towards People. Things have no meaning for them. A triumph of engineering, or organisation, or art, or logical reasoning, makes no appeal whatever to a woman's enthusiasm. She may admire the man who achieves them, of course, but that will be because he happens to have sad eyes, or a firm mouth or a wife in an asylum. If the personal touch be lacking. Things simply bore woman.bla,n Hay. * * SELF-KNOWLEDGE. Self-knowledge is hard to acquire, because it demands intellectual honesty. It requires a person to see himself as he really is, not as he thinks it ought to be, or as others tell him he is. This detachment of the real personality from the imaginative one does not como easily, but only with a considerable degreo" of pain. One recalls George Eliot's "Daniel Deronda," and that scene where the spoiled' darling, Gwendolen Harleth, learns the great Herr Klesmer's opinion in regard to her ability as an actress and singer. She really feels clever enough for anything; but ho gives her vanity a hard jolt ' by predicting for her only the certainty ■ of a humiliating failure.—Kate Anderson-