The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10. HOPE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 104, 10 August 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10. HOPE.

Mr. Clement Wragge, the apostle cr woe, has promised Ausirami ana .New Zealand a dry time, and has also given i.s to understand that we ought not to feel too clieeriul about future seismic disturbances. Dr. Bell has suggested that New Zealand should undertake the collection of seismic data, so that even though property is not saved during coming earthquakes, people may know what is coming soon enough to save their lives. A gentleman in Wellington | mentions that as fish have not been plentiful in the waters around New Zealand lately, the sea is probably going out of the fish industry. And, altogether, colonial pessimists are having a very good innings indeed. During the past few years men have been inventing, and more or less successfully using air machines, and a large number of then* have been killed. This hasn't prevented many other men from ascending into the air in all sorts of gimcrack contrivances, for " hope springs eternal in the human 1 breast." Nothing kills hope except loss of mind, and when the lunatic loses hope 'he commits suicide. War, pestilence, I murder, sudden death, drought, flood, ! earthquake or mortgages do not kill hope. If they did, we should not want to live. People who express their pessimism are r.it necessarily devoid of hope, but they shoul.i be restrained from such expression as public nuisances. We don'.- gnv. ovei hoping because rust gets in.o tbe crops, or beI cause the cows co dry, or the grass I burns, or our best friends die, or the London money market becomes " tight." | A person may sing with joy a 'week after the burning of a city, or the day j after a massacre. Buoyancy is the greatest gift the human being can have. Life without hope is death indeed. The Siberian prisoner, manacled and festering, lives because he hopes, the African slave exists because he hopes he may yet be free; the world and every normal living thing in it is full of glorious hope.

Hope is the" basis of our home life, our business life, our national life. We may believe that Asiatics will some day try to sweep the country, but we hope we shall ibe able to sweep them into the sea. The stricken human being perishing slowly with an incurable disease, hopes he may get better, and plans for next year and the year after. The aged person on the brink of the grave thinks more of the "here" than the hereafter, and it sustains and comforts him. And so wherever there arises a public or a private "long-face," whose life is one constant moan, he suggests at once that he is an abnormality, and should be carefully watched. Lugubriousness is epidemic, unfortunately. If a man of any eminence takes the public platform and tells the people of Sew Zealand that the country is going to the dogs, he will assuredly have followers. The maniac who informs the people that' at 3.30 p.m. on the li3fch June, such and such a year, the earth will cease to revolve, will get a following of persons to wail on t'ha mountain tops. Pessimists who . mentioned Halley's Comet would cause widespread desolation were believed, for man is very much like a sheep, and will " follow the leader." A. few assiduous persons could convince many people that any industry was in its death-throes, that a tidal wave was due in the morning, that Mount Egmont would erupt, or that drought was imminent in Taranaki. Hope has been the watchword of the Britain, and hope has made the Empire. Grenville was not a pessimist when he fought fifty ships of the enemy. Nelson didn't moan at the odds at Trafalgar, Anson, with 90 per cent, of his men down with scurvy, did not hesitate to "take on" the mammoth Spanish squadron off the South African coast, and no person who was ever worth a thought was a pessimist at heart. New Zealanders are buoyant enough, if a little cautious. They are buoyant because they are strong physically; they are hopeful because they are young; they are optimistic because they are human, warm, alive, full-blooded. When New Zealand despairs, when she says "what's the good?" when she twiddles her thumbs, and believes the pessimists—-good-bye! If people did not hope, the men who were saved at the Otira tunnel accident would be dead; if pessimists ran the country the Penguin people would have rotted on the beach at Terawhiti; if the grizzlers were believed, fishermen would fish no more, the Petroleum Company would cease to bore, and no one would fight bush-sickness, or diphtheria, or consumption, or any evil disease or thing. We continue to work for a bare crust because we hope to get butter for it if we work hard; we care for our children because we hope they may become strong men and women; we vote at the elections because we hope our man will get in; and we go to bed hoping to see the sunshine again. Pessimism is decay, and optimism is progress, red-blood, vitality, power and eminence. Pessimism is poverty, spinelessness, atrophy, rickets and softening of the mental and physical fibres. Optimism made Pome and Greece, the French Empire and Britain's greatness and allpower. One optimist has in history made a lugubrious empire dance with joy and i rise to eminence. The man who has no I confidence, no hope in the country which shelters him, has no right to be in it; awl if he wants to grizzle, he should go 'into the bush and tell his troubles to [the trees. There is no room in an in'fant country for pessimists, and pessimism might with justice be made a notifiable disease. The people who are treated badly are frequently those who complain least and who battle through with hope for a sword and courage for

a shield. Trouble is half over at the moment that it is grappled with. "Did you tackle that trouble that came to you With a resolute heart and cheerful. Or hide your face from the light of day With a craven soul and fearful? Oh, a trouble's a ton or a trouble's an ounce, Or a trouble is what you make it. , It isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts, But only—how did you take it?"