APPEAL FOR TOLERANCE

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21226, 24 September 1940, Page 7

APPEAL FOR TOLERANCE

(To the Editor) Sir, —While it is, I think, generally conceded that a correspondence column may legitimately be used for airing views, grievances and egotisms, it certainly is not the place for spasms of poetry. However, the following, taken from an American magazine, may, besides being of some interest to your readers, serve as an illustration of at least one section of American war opinion. It i also expresses only too vividly the tragic despair of the idealist, buoyed up by all the playing up of the League of Nations, and the desperate efforts of British statesmen to avert ! the inevitable, even at the eleventh hour. For its broad outlook, its mute appeal for a wider tolerance, I will let the poem speak for itself:— Know there was a moment came and went When what some said and what the others said, When both were found to be incompetent And we dared hope that there might rise instead A gentler doctrine, lacking the hacte of these That would, in meeting matter* of the State, Have made us see things as the gardener sees; This doctrine came, but frailly and too late. At or- *he Teutons yapping with belief. Thai made their minds the replica of fists . And gave heroic, ominous relief After the scorn of France’s theorists. It was their best they drew on for their worst; It was the nation’s greatness that did fall; They were by mental benefits accursed And in their madness, metaphysical. Know that the time when jungle strife was through And there was bounty here for everyone; Know that precisely then the contest grew And what the books had done was now undone. Know that we caught the fleeting glimpse of peace, Know that we saw the mildly glowing light Of ways that could have given us release And then we sank into a dreary night. Lest the gloomy view expressed In the last verse be discouraging, 1 hasten to add that, wrapt in his vision of a world steadily growing more matured and tolerant, broadening out from precedent to precedent without a single relapse, the youthful idealist encounters (as in this case) a shattering incompatibility that changes him into that other lovable absurdity—the soured old cynic. What can we do with such people?—l am, etc., H.S. Hamilton, September 23.