LIFE’S REAL HEROES.

Waikato Times, Volume 109, Issue 18347, 5 June 1931, Page 8

LIFE’S REAL HEROES.

APPEAL FOR SYMPATHY. DEAN’S EXPERIENCES. “My experiences have given me a great respect for men and women living under the most difficult conditions with few of the amenities of life, who are the real heroes and heroines of the world,” stated Very Rev. G. R. Barnett, Dean of Hamilton, addressing the Luncheon Club yesterday on “The Wanderings of a Padre.” The Dean said consideration for poverty-stricken people living in densely-populated cities and settlers in the back'blocks was not a question of free trade or protection, of Country Party, of Labour Party, of any party, but of distributing a little more of the milk of human kindness and sympathy. If it had not been for the tyranny, cruelty and oppression of the Tsarist regime there would have been no Bolshevist Russia. If it was not for the hardness and selfishness of capitalists in our own industrial system there -would be no extremists in the Labour movement. The things which would make most for the settlement of our present-day difficulties were a little more generosity and willingness to serve others, not only ourselves.

The Dean preceded these remarks with interesting reminiscences of his ministerial work In the West Coast, Tolaga Bay and Coromandel districts and in the thickly populated part of Portsmouth in England. He spoke of being bushed in a wild part of the Gisborne district, of traversing heavy floods on horseback, conducting a service at a Maori sports’ gathering, travelling over a narrow track carved into a precipice, crossing a tidal river, and many other adventures. The thanks of members for the interesting address were returned by the chairman, Mr H. J. Ferguson.