THE HARDEST TASK.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 49, 13 March 1937, Page 4

THE HARDEST TASK.

" Eztreme courses are easy to follow. They only require blind eyes and a hot temper, and the kind of courage which temper gives. It is a far more courageous thing to insist upon facing the faetsj even when they involve the surrender of part of your creed. One of my predecessors here, Lord Minto, when he was Viceroy of India, laid down in a public speech a principle which seems to me to deserve to rank as one of the great maxims of public conduet. ' The strongest man,' he said, 'is the man who is not afraid to be called weak.' "Have you ever .considered what that passage in the Bible mean^: ' They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint'? It sounds like an anti-climax, like a deseent from the greater to the less. But I think that the meaning is exactly the opposite. It is an ascent from the easy to the difficult. It is the last feat which is the hardest. It is not so difficult in a great crisis to rise like eagles; it is not so difficult in moodg of excitement to run and not be weary. But most of the world's work has to he done at a foot's pace, and the hardest task of all is to walk the prosaie roads of life and not faint."— Lord Twegdsmuir.