TOWARD BETTER THINGS.

Shannon News, 1 August 1922, Page 3

TOWARD BETTER THINGS.

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Your correspondent, in appreciating the value of community predating the value of community singing, and you, yourself, in your footnote .present a most valuable point of view in, an important matter. We have all been so imbued with the spirit of hate during the late war that we find it! almost impossible to expel it from our hearts, and many of us .discovering too late that the Germans were (no more hateful than ourselves, are inclined to vent Hie sux-plus bitjex ness upon our neighbours. If we could but comprehend that “to undei-stand all is to forgive all.” To look for a moment from the other max 's point of view.

It. is much to the credit of the Labour people that they should have generously given the first hour of the time which they had paid for the dance 1 , to this good object. Indeed, those who do not belong to the party must concede that iti stands strong for most good and great movements, and notably against war, the Devil’s own—that which brings- in its train evils so infinitely worse than death. A noble writer in the “Liverpool Post.” says: -‘What is the wor'd’s greatest need? What will briiig the biggest benefits; to humanity ” The world’s greatest need is simply Love or Compassitt’n. Schopenhauer, the great German, thinker, in his “Basis of, Morality,” says: “Limitless compassion for al 1 living .things is the surest token of & really l good man.” All the greatf *st souls that have ever blessed this world were full of'this compassion—Christ, Buddha, Zoroaster and others, weite overflowing with it. I 'have quoted thus largely from our German comrade, and cannot conclude more) fittingly than by giving you) one of his most noble passages: “Compassion .with its two loving arms .toleration in thought and charity in deed, is the greatest force in the world, the sweetener of life), the comforter of mourning, the conqueror of death, and undoer of ill, .the transformer of evil, the subduer of strife, the cultivator of peace;

tb.e sower of good fellowship, the reaper of Heaven/’—l am, etc., SPECTATOR. P.S.—lt would he a loss to omit his wise statement that “no person can hate long and keep straight forward, far it is in the nature ol' hatred to abase the heart till it will resort to any meanness to achieve its wicked ends.”