The Daily News. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1911. ANOTHER MILESTONE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 156, 30 December 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1911. ANOTHER MILESTONE.

"The seasons creep along the years," and we are so constituted that whether we he twenty years old or eighty, we make arrangements for future years. So that although there is a certain solemnity about the passing of a year, the natural buoyancy about which it would be impossible to remain alive, sustains us in the race. Host of us, in reviewing the past year, insensibly remind ourselves that we are growing older, and when we ponder a few moments on human life we acknowledge that in the great scheme of things the span of our existence is trifling. If one thinks that since 1811 the whole earth has been re-peopled—-or almost so—we conclude that the finest possession a human being has is hope. Because "hope springs eternal" we make our arrangements for the years that are to come, rarely considering that the span allotted to us is so brief in length. In Xew Zealand the only things that are young are those created by two or three generations of transitory folks. The contemplation of a giant of the forest—a hoary kauri we will say—takes shortlived man back to a period anterior to British history. The sinking of a bore by utilitarian modem implements brings to light links with the past, tens of thousands of years prior to any written or known history. One glance at majestic Egmont may transport us in thought to days when the whole life of the globe was utterly unlike any life'it now contains. "A thousand days in Thy sight are but as yesterday, seeing that it is passed as a watch in the night." The light of the star winking in the vast unknown infinity has taken hundreds of years to register itself on the eye of the beholder. Fortunately, perhaps, the infinite is little considered by the children of men, each living in his little world, during his tiny span, uninfluenced by the thought of his utter insignificance and the brief duration of his occupancy. The past has no real concern for us, although its happier memories sustain us for the inevitable conflict with the future. We endeavor to measure immeasurable time and hold high festival at the burial of every year, perhaps because we have survived during its progress. To our generation the events of the past year have made great history. Under the mellowing influence of the next thousand new years tha events of 1911 may easily be utterly forgotten. We in our small corner, concerned mostly with matters near at hand instantly, in pondering on the year's events, conceive the election of some men to Parliament as an important one. The forest tree will have grown but little before the whole of the people concerned have been gathered in, the stalactite will not perceptibly increase while any existing New Zealander is here to wonder at it. Throughout the earth the sons of men have fought and bled and suffered and striven as they have done since man. existed. Human nature has not altered, man loves and does the same things he did thousands of years

ago, with variations. The pomp and panoply of a Coronation, the bloodshed in Tripoli, the trouble in Persia, the promises of human reform are mere reflections from the illimitable past thrown on the window of the latest year. The man who believes he is himself good, deplores the growing wickedness of the world. The man who is not so sure of 'his own spotlessness conceives tfie world to be growing better. It is impossible in the span of any human life to see an alteration in human nature. The most cherished beliefs of all human beings are in the unseeable and unprovable. The man of 1911 is no different in this essen--1 tial characteristic of all living human beings to the ancient Chaldean. He is not even superior. He is merely an accidental human being, one of a vast crowd, set' down to do his allotted task, and to then disappear to make room. He knows not whence he came or whither he goes, but his belief that he knows these things sustains 1 him from one new year to another. The small concerns of our particular speck of the cosmos have in the year 1011 prospered. The steady progress in which Nature is the chief factor makes the outlook for 1912 cheering. The essentials to success are health, and then health and then health again. The essentials to health are to take advantage of the natural blessings New Zealand has in abundance. To take advantage of life in the most beautiful of all lands is to lire well, to live healthily, to live prosperously. He who sourly grinds and strives to make every halfpenny blossom into two may have money without real wealth. Anyhow, he cannot emulate Methuselah's remarkable performance, even though "a thousand years are but as yesterday." The old year dies, the new year lives, and everybody must turn over some kind of a new leaf. We are not partial to the idea that a man can be a scoundrel on the last day of the Old Year, and a satit the next day, and people who have strength enough to keep resolves need not select any special day for making them. Christendom has selected the first day of the new year as an appropriate time for the exchange of greetings between friend and friend. To despatch a friend on a journey with kindly words is useful and sustaining, and even the mechanical methods adopted of doing the job in a wholesale manner—say by specially printed sixpenny wires—does not rob the occasion of its gladness and hopefulness. Mutual aid during any period is- a ground for sincere exchanges of seasonable greetings. Following time-honored custom, we wish our readers' A HAPPY NEW YEAR,