THE WAIPUKURAU PRESS TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 1935. BE YOURSELF BUT KEEP IN STEP.

Waipukurau Press, Volume XXX, Issue 63, 19 March 1935, Page 4

THE WAIPUKURAU PRESS TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 1935. BE YOURSELF BUT KEEP IN STEP.

4 The stern lesson the world is learning is that it must march together to the future if it is to prosper and if civilisation is to endure, comments that well-known British writer, Arthur Mee, in an editorial appearing recently in his popular weekly newspaper. “We are part of one another, yet in our own lives let us never forget that we must be ourselves,‘and, seeing the Highest, steadily prove it. We are not sheep, or ants, or bees. To march in step may be a splendid thing. It is a fine sight to watch the Guards at their drill. In the tramp of many feet, when brave men march away in perfect step, there is something that thrills us. It is indeed a good thing to belong to a company, doing things together and keeping time with each other. But there are those who think we should all be at all times of our life in step. We should cease to be individual human beings, and we should yield ourselves to the complete control of a leader, moving as companies. That is what is meant by marching in step, as some use these words. They think .that only in this way shall we come to a good society for the nation. Those who will not keep in step must be made to do so. They cannot be made to think in step; but they must speak and act in step. It is here the danger comes. The world has owed its greatest gains to the men who broke away from the ranks. The prophets and apostles were men who, when the Voice came to them, were led along new ways alone. Isaiah and Jeremiah were condemned because they would hot keep step. The thinkers of the world have always, like Newton, been ‘voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.’ The discoveries which have enriched our knowledge were not made by regiments keeping step, but by solitary thinkers. Men are not like bees. We must seek individual worth, we must pursue our high endeavour at all costs. If we miss that we miss the chief purpose of our life. This, then, is the task for our country, to learn how we can keep together and at the same time leave room for this individual freedom, discipline and adventure too. We want to know how we can be ourselves and at the same time keep in step; how we can march with the rest and have at the same time a nation in which the spirit of man is free to make new’ ways when the vision comes. We have to have this for ourselves and to teach it afresh to the world. It needs it badly.” Recent international happenings certainly tend to emphasise the point thus made.