CLIMATE’S INFLUENCE

Hokitika Guardian, 25 July 1930, Page 6

CLIMATE’S INFLUENCE

BRITAIN’? SUPREMACY. “I attribute everything in every country to the cluvatV The condji.tuticn of the Stole the peculiar form of its government, the customs of the people, their art. • ' literature.; virtues, and vices and amusements, all are a matter of climate.” says Miss MaVy Borden, the novelist, in an article in “Harper’s Monthly.” “The American brand urges men to gigantic endeavour, and daring experiment. It achieves miracles of energy, fantastic victories over natural obstacles. It impels men more than any climate in the world, to work, to he active. It is intolerant of lazines, has so little use for it that it simply wipes the lazy man off the slate. It is not the spirit of Democracy in America that has fashioned a god out- of the idea of work. The worship of work and the spirit of Democracy are both alike, I maintain, due to the climate, and one of the most hopeful things about it is just this intolerance of idleness. We all know that America lias nob yet produced a race, or a racial type, or a racial mind, and this fact—to be very frank—is a guarantee of Great Britain’s moral supremacy for the next few hundred years. After that, when the population of the United States has added to itself another hundred million people. Great Britain may have to take second place. “In the meantime, I back England and the enduring power of England and its curious slowly developing life and its ohsttinatei, invincible unity,, which is so little understood by foreign politicians, and which I attribute entirely to its geography, or in other■ words, to its climate.”