COLD COMFORT.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 May 1921, Page 6

COLD COMFORT.

IN THE BACKBLOCKS.

A HARD TIME AHEAD.

There was an overflowing congregation at the thanksgiving service held at St. Pauls Church, Devonport, the other night. The Rev. Geojge Budd, superintendent of Home Missions for the Presbyterian church in New Zeaian.i, ad dressing his former congregation, referred at sonie length to an extensive tour which he had just made to the backblock stations in the King Country. The previous Sunday he had been preaching in a corrugated iron shed, where the cold night wind blew through the building, and where the seat of the person who led the praise was a benzine case. He contrasted the comfort in which the people of the city worshipped, compared with their brethren in the outback districts. People in the cities did not realise as did the country people, the significance of seed time and harvest, and he assured his hearers that it was going to be a hard winter for many a struggling settler. In a long experience of country life he had never seen things looking worse. He saw paddock sifter paddock full of lean, miserable-looking cattle, because of the lack of feed, caused by the dry season. The frosts had set in earlier than usual, and disaster faced many a man who had 'gone out into the backblocks to out a home ftfr himself. These people had reached the stage when they did not say, “What can we do without!” but “How much can we get of what we really want?” He instanced the case of two soldier boys far away out, who were putting up even a harder fight £o live t)ian they had done on the battlefield. Yet they were cheerful, and said they would win through yet, and the old shed where they had started life would one day be the motor shed. There were many brave souls like the two soldier boys who were indeed engaged in a struggle to win through, and the contents of their tin shanties showed them to be men of grit and high ideals, where patriotism and pioneering went hand in hand. He had been a little surprised that, while the country was being pinched and squeezed by a depression as great as the country had ever passed through, |he members of two Government Commissions had the previous Sunday been doing the sights of one of the tourist resorts at considerable expense. Hundreds of pounds were being spent on one of these commissions and all they had to do was to inquire into racing permits for jockey clubs. At a time like this there should only be one idea about the number of race meetings to be held. City dwellers did not know the heroic work being done just now, very often uncomplainingly, in the country districts, and their one prayer should be that the clouds will soon lift and the bright sunshine of bountiful harvests once more shed its bright rays over the land. He was no pessimist, but they had to face the facts as they found them. Through it 'all God’s 'hatod was working to put his people through a testing time.