VISION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 May 1941, Page 5

VISION

DEMANDED IN SHAPING NEW ORDER WORK & PLANNING NEEDED. ARCHDEACON RICH SPEAKS IN WELLINGTON. Members of the Masterton Rotary Club paid their annual visit to the Wellington Rotary Club today and the speaker at the luncheon was the Ven. Archdeacon E. J. Rich, whose subject was "Vision."

"It. is not easy when the present struggle and the immediate task loom up so tremendously and seem so vital to keep the distant goal steadily in view, but it must be done for it is eternally true that ’where there is no vision the people perish.'" said Archdeacon Rich. "Present facts hinder of help our progress so we must keep our feet firm on the rock of reality while we reach out to the heights of idealism. Any attitude, ol isolation or neutrality is impossible now. We have had heart-reaching examples of the folly of that attitude. Nations which adopted it have been betrayed and conquered. Great international wrongs should be resisted just as spontaneously as a decent man would spring to the rescue of a child who was being ill-treated. "The idealism the world needs is realism too,” said the Archdeacon. "The British race does but wear _ its heart on its sleeve, but in our minds there are values which are raised, conceptions which are eternally right. This idealism has brought us through staggering blows and is now making us strain every effort to get material resources. Our idealism, our belief in the great realities of the spirit, is issuing in stubborn resistance to overwhelming odds and will, presently, send us forth to aggressive action more powerful than any earth-bound dictalor could ever inspire. . ■■Realism combined with idealism is irresistable," said Archdeacon Rich. •‘Easy talk about a new world order is useless unless it results in action. The question is are we prepared to pay the price for the new order? Here vision must range widely. The better world will come if we work and plan for it. but it will not come in a moment.-To plan for something which can be realised is our task, taking long views weighing every issue. He is not dead who lives in lives made better by his life and to work for the realisation of a distant ideal is a task worthy of a man. even if he does not live to see his goal attained. “The new world order will come from within outwards," said the Arc ideacon. "H will be the inevitable expression of a way of life accepted b.> the will of the people out of whose travail it has been born. So there must be personal responsibility, each doing his part. There are many obstacles. Words and slogans can be made to evade rather than elucidate the issue. Complacency is a hopeless attitude. Man must not be enslaved by the instruments forged for his development. He must rise above self-interest anc see beneath the surface. At this grave hour it is not what others do which must decide our service. In her hour of greatest peril Greece knew her greater glory. She would fight, it i need be,'she declared, alone. We must roach a stage when the vision splendid will be embraced for its own sake, alone, when men will say ‘do others what they will, we'shall follow the I ideal.’ ”