SMILE, BUT AVOID DRUGB.

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18927, 22 April 1933, Page 7

SMILE, BUT AVOID DRUGB.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I should like to break a friendly lance with your “Free Lance" In connection with his reference io myself in your issue of the 15th inst. Unfortunately my mail is bi-weekly and my papers arrive late, hence the delay. 1 can assure "Free Lance” that I am not an advocate • of-dour physiognomies, as a depression cure.,,; I have been known to tell a joke—in fact, I have told the same joke several times. When I said that we shall never again return to normal I referred to what is still regarded as normality—the conditions obtaining in 1914. When weare assured that-even if Britain recovered the volume of trade she enjoyed in 1914, prior to the. war, there would still .be approximately 2,000,000 of her people unemployed, owing to the tremendous advance In the technique and mechanisation of production internationally, coupled with a proportionate loss of consumptive power because it is impossible for the displaced labour to be reabsorbed into Industry under the present economic and financial system —when this obtains internationally and we are faced with a world total of approximately 20,000,000 people whose labour is no longer required in industry under the present system, but for whom work must he “found” and sparingly issued as a rare and precious thing, or to whom a “dole” is grudgingly paid that our sensibilities may not be offended by the spectacle of actual death from starvation —surely, even if we can still tell a story and crack a joke, it is time to face the issue squarely and try our utmost to readjust the manmade economic, machine so that it shall function to enable the hungry to eat and the ragged to wear the goods which are piling up arid for which the world can find no “market." The Coueism inaugurated by the author of that famous phrase, “We have turned the corner," will be a deadly menace to the nation if its inane futility it noL recognised. Unless my friend believes In faith-healing he would seek medical assistance at once if lie suspected he was developing cancer. He will agree with me that' indulgence in drugs merely deadens the pain while the disease insidiously tightens its grip until all surgical j help is unavailing. The Creator whom tho world; adores, whatever the term used, stored the earth with all that mankind could need to minister to Ids happiness, and as If to help us, despite our greed and stupidity, Nature lias given us record crops of all kinds during the past two years; yet we sink deeper into the mire. . Never in the most grievous days of famine and pestilence bus starvation stalked so openly through the world, a world cursed. God pity our blindness, with, too great an abundance. It is diiltcult, to speak calmly while humanity is being so betrayed. Some little while ago a speaker over the wireless pleaded fpr help for the Blanket Society, pleaded on behalf of mothers and babies lacking suilleient food —mothers who could not feed their babies because they were underfed themselves. Our children leaving school face, what? —the “dole” or relief camp. Well might Rushworth term these hoys and girls who are so soon to be men and women “the Legion of the Damned.” How shall we meet their hurt, accusing eyes when they realise how their birthright lias been filched from them ? There is yet. time for us to save our children and ourselves, hut the sands arc running low. Unless a reorganisation of our economic and financin' system is undertaken to bring it into harmony with the present machine age disaster must ensue. Lot us get In work. If our leaders’ hands are palsied, lot them make way for ! others. The lime has long gone by ! for Hie futilities which pass current I for optimism. The only true optimism is to look squarely at our probl loin, appreciating all its difilcullies; | then set about, its solution with ! courage and determination. Smile by I all means, hut don't take drugs.— I am. etc., J. 11. FURNISS. I Iluutly, April IS, 1933,