TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20492, 7 May 1938, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY

Humanity Astray “Man is on a journey, and he has lost his way. He stands in life a misfit. He has been caught and imprisoned, he plays with shadows behind bars, he broods in darkness, he is afraid and lonely, he does ugly things because there is no light. But everywhere he beats at tbe doors of his prison for a new territory in which his mind and spirit may find full life. There arc signs that we are becoming aware of the fact that we have been marching along roads which lead to frustration and to death. IVe are coming to the end of a drear epoch. We are weary of the sterile sands of mere disillusionment. Renaissance and revival are coming up over the edge of the world; these are days when, with a sense of returning responsibility for the marching and the journey of to-morrow, we can begin to strike new paths.

“When Drake and his men were caught in the swamps of Panama, they did not stop to analyse the bog they were in. They climbed a tree from which they saw where was jungle, and where the glittering waters of the Pacific lav-, waiting for them and calling to them that they had, up to now, only lived in half the world which could be theirs. Unless our civilisation is to go down to its end, we have to climb to some point of vision like that, to see and to choose. We must stop being spectators, stop waiting for someone else to take the first step. The best in most of us is buried under a mass of stupid convention, sloth and fear. We are also blinded by prejudice and the dust of misunderstandings. We need more efficient thinking, and Reeling knit to thinking.