OUR LOYALTIES.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 157, 21 July 1937, Page 4

OUR LOYALTIES.

" Of all human emotions shared by men politieally, as members of a society, tribe, or nation, the two strongest are (1) loyalty to a chief, their rallying point, whether by descent or election, and (2) passion for freedom, for a man's liberty to live his own life without oppression. And as both these emotions are noble, so when kingship beeomes a tyranny or individual liberty runs boon into anarchy, men of convinced mind and gallant spirit will lay down their lives against eitber. And this contest between extremes has lasted down through history. Foreigners laugh at us as a nation incurably addicted to compromise. But Constitutions, to be stable, are not built upon striet logicj rather on understanding, on the give and take of common sense. And if, by conciliating the two fieree emotions ahove named, our Constitution has for centuries worked out and improved its stahility; if it has stood not only unshaken but conflrmed by a war which throughout Europe cast down thrones and upheaved dietators ; if here at home we can go about our day's work unmolested, and retujpi at uight to our homes as to a castle undefended yet guarded by law, ihen, call it by what naine you will, or smile at its oddities, I an» happy to have lived under Arthur Quiller-Couok. . — ' "* ^ r