The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1926. GOOD BEHAVIOUR.

Hokitika Guardian, 31 July 1926, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1926. GOOD BEHAVIOUR.

1 A well-known English writer contributing to a Loudon .Sunday paper at ' the close of the great strike, paid a tribute to tlie gentlemanly behaviour of the people, tie wrote: “We have passed through the greatest .social convulsion in our modern history—perhaps the greatest convulsion since the civil W ur—and we have not heard a gun tired, nor has there been a life lost by deliberate violence. I do not know of any parallel to such a record, and there is nothing surprising in the fact that it has left the observers of other more volcanic peoples in a sort of dazed admiration of the sweet reasonableness with which we quarrel. A trumpery little Royalist .demonstration in Paris last Sunday produced more bloodshed and more deaths than the mightiest industrial civil war the world lias ever witnessed, and there is never a local strike in the United States without the shooting irons doing deadly work. It has always been so. The Englishman has a congenital dislike for bloodshed. If, as the witty Frenchman said, we take our pleasures sadly, it is not less true that we take our quarrels cheerfully.’' The comment is well deserved for there is no doubt that time has revealed all the fac-{s, that it was a perilous and critical period in British history. But Englishmen are at their best in troublous times. As the same writer quoted above has said : AYc are seen at our best when other people are apt to be seen at their worst, and have a pleasant and perverse habit of being a little merry when the clouds are darkest. TTe have quarrelled, very foolishly and extravagantly, but still as gentlemen should quarrel. Let us see if we cannot live up to the good opinions we have earned and settle our quarrel, also like gentlemen. I rather like this new world picture of ourselves as a goodtempered people who conduct our rows with decorum and keep the peace even when we got to war.” Great Britain has long earned a reputation for manifesting goodwill, and the maintenance of that spirit of cordial feeling which has healed so many serious breaches in the past. AVc know how Great Britain is predisposed to keep her contracts even after periods of hard fought warfare, or following a long term of chronic difficulty, and misunderstanding. There are some fine achievements in our Umpire story in that resnect. and the social and political life of the dominions" is a tribute to the triumph of the policy of good will generously extended to all parts of the Empire, be the earlier conditions what they may. As another English writer has said: “Goodwill .s a mental habit, and like all good habits is very difficult to form. Bad habits form thorn- , selves with the utmost ease; good hab- , its are the very deuce to start going. , You have to begin them afresh every hour of every day for about fifri years. Goodwill is not accomplished by '■ a single- grand, vague gesture. It is «

the cumulative produce of a million tiny, separate, tiresome, tedious .efforts. It must not depend on what the other fellow does, or wait till he begins. There can be no ‘ifs’ about it.' Still more important, it can be nothing but an empty aspiration until circumstances arise which render it really difficult to put into performance. "Wo journey ,down to the factory, or the office, and wo are bursting with good-will. We smile, we deliberaely adopt a benevolent, accommodating tone, we work hard, and think proudly how splendid it all is.” This is the spirit which gave the nation its last triumph, the victory in the great strike—a desire for orderliness and good beliavious. In other words respect for law and order, and the maintenance of constitutional rights under sound administration for the benefit of all and not for the few only.