Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1939. TIME MARCHES ON!

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 December 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1939. TIME MARCHES ON!

'TIME marches imperiously on. Another year is dying. Of all sounds of all bells most, solemn and touching, wrote Charles Lamb, is the peal which rings out the Old Year. And yet he could find it in him to be cheerful at the prospect of the coming year. “I am in love with this green earth,” he said. ‘‘The face of town and country, the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets ... 1 am alive, 1 move about, I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821!” In one ol his conical unhappy moods Adam Lindsay Gordon wrote: For good undone, and gifts misspent and resolutions vain, ’Tis somewhat late to trouble; this I know, I would live the same life over if I had to live again. And the chances are I go where most men go. This is poor philosophy, for whatever we may have left undone in the way of doing good, and whatever resolutions we may have failed to keep, it is never too late to mend. Life, from the cradle to the grave, is made up of struggle and disappointments, and it is not given us to reach the. topmost peak of our desire; but the stout heart never gives up trying. There lias never yet been a year without its mistakes —the mistakes of the nation and the mistakes of the individual. The year 1939 has been full of them ; but it is on our mistakes that "we build. It is an imperfect world —always has been and probably always will be. But it is better, far better, than it was, despite the terrible tragedy today of the war. Knowledge has increased, and there has been a growing appreciation of moral and spiritual values, a widening humanity among those peoples and nations which are not bound by the chains of dictators, such as Germany and Russia are. But out of the war will come results which will guarantee peace for the peoples of the world in order that the mistakes of 1939 may never again be perpetrated. Humanity’s great hope lies in Britain and her allies. Man, if he is a “political animal,” is also milch more. Science and invention claim his attention. He adds miracle to miracle. He navigates the air, and he brings into his home the marvel of Hie “wireless.” Always seeking, always probing, he would penetrate the very secrets of the universe. Each year brings forth some new wonder —and who can say what 1940 will produce? What a great adventure it all is I We are alive! We move! Time marches on!