PROCRASTINATION ENDS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 181, 5 August 1935, Page 10

PROCRASTINATION ENDS

Chile’s New Sense of Responsibility

“^TANANA”— BOTH IN LETTER and in spirit—is ended so far as Chile is concerned. That, at least, is the verdict reached by a jury of national writers who have found that the word, as a colloquial expression for procrastination, has disappeared from the average Chilean’s vocabulary, while th© spurt of national activity to overcome the depression has banished the ‘‘manana” idea from the business world, it is hoped, forever. It has been generally recognised that from the beginning Chile has stood out among the nations of South America as a country inhabited by an energetic race, physically strong, mentally alert, proud of its hard-won independence and animated by confidence in itself and in its future destinies. Of all the peoples of South America the Chileans were farthest from realising that vague idea, so prevalent in Europe and the United States, that the southern continent of the New World was “a land wherein it seemed always afternoon,” inhabited by lotus eaters who habitually relegated the duties of to-day to a morrow that seldom dawned.

The journalistic jury declares with emphasis that Chile has never been the typical land of “Manana”. Rather has it been a country in which the struggle for existence has been waged with sharpened weapons, where clim-

ate, mental environment and the contact of many races has developed a type peculiar to the South Pacific, comparable rather with the people of New Zealand or Australia than directly with any of the nations of the Old World.

Naturally, the journalistic summingup cannot be accepted as a national verdict, but it would seem from the numerous newspaper references to the subject that citizens are now all for “Hoy Dia” (To-day) in politics and business alike. This attitude is increasingly evident in all South American countries, and the time is not far distant, it is predicted, when “Manana” will no longer be heard in the southern continent. Inherent in a system peculiarly calculated to destroy all sense of responsibility, the “manana” idea had spread from the central government to every branch of the administration. The very universality of the idea in the past in South America enables ono better to appreciate the changes wrought by the present energetic administration of the majority of the republics in every department of public life. Tho conduct of public business has been simplified, control has been tightened and a new sense of responsibility animates publicservants. In a word, throughout South America “Manana” has given place to “Hoy Dia”.