MACHINES THAT KILL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 655, 25 January 1952, Page 18

MACHINES THAT KILL

bW

SUNDOWNER

DECEMBER 12

T will not be the fault of the Department of Agriculture if tractors kill more farmers next year than horses, bulls, — trees, cliffs, ladders, stacks, and live wires. Month by month the casualty rate rises, and month by month the Department’s experts urge the necessity of care. The review of the situation in last month’s issue of the Journal made it clear that although tractors have

killéd only one in six of the accidert victims of the last twelve years, they

killed one in four in 1949, one in

three in 1950, and are now probably killing one in two of all farmers lost during farm operatiors. Whatever the figures for 1951 prove to be, the tractor has won its place already as the most deadly, as well as the most an and useful, machine on the and. But here is something I saw today as I watched a modern baler at work: a girl of ten on the tractor seat, with the driver standing by her side: a boy of seven sitting on the other side of the seat; two boys (one perhaps eight and the other ten) sitting on the tool. box of the baler, and a boy of 12 or 13 standing by the man on the moving sledge. All’s well’ that ends well, of course, and these are not the mechanical ninnies I was when I was their age. The youngest of them could probably start the tractor, and the eldest drive it for half a day without assistance. We had a visitor yesterday who came by car with her son of six, and when she left the boy ran ahead of her to the gate; a distance of two or three chains. and had the engine started and running smoothly when the rest of us arrived. It is the age of machines, and of mechanically precocious children. But if I had half a dozen children and wanted to keep them I would not scatter them over the top of a tractor and a moving baler. *h ate a

DECEMBER 20

ee at ~~, 7 (CHRISTMAS is on me too soon this year, and always now comes too often. It does not depress me as much as it does~a.friend in Dunedin, who has just sent: me a book for Christmas with the hope that we shall both be able to get through the next few weeks without losing our faith in human

nature; but I am always glad when it pesses. I can still manage the eating and drinking, and there was a time when I could do the praying, too;

though not without some conflict.

Prayer, if you have puritan origins, gets in the way of cakes and ale, and by the time you have reached a clearer air, prayer has lost

its fervour and its meaning. I have never, therefore, celebrated an English Christmas, but only the Scottish substitutea lukewarm festival without much conviction. As far back as I can remember there were Christmas stockings, but they were every-day stockings fastened with a safety pin to the end of che bed, and we knew who filled them. I can’t think myself back to a period of belief in Father Christmas or Santa Claus, and I must have been 19 or 20 before I saw a Christmas tree. It was a big loss but also a considerable gain, and I don’t

know now. whether I am sorry or glad that I was born into a world cleared of such make-believe. Make-believe may still be the best reality for children; the only reality at some stages in their lives, as it continues to be all their lives for some grown-ups. But there is no longer much make-believe about Christmas for the others: it is largely lies for them and self-seeking. I don’t know which I loathe most-the rogues who use Christmas politically or the humbugs who exploit it commercially; but I_ would work for the death of all of them if it would leave enough people alive to keep the world going. ‘

DECEMBER 25

CAN think of three Christmas Days in 50 years that went too quickly for me. On the first I was 40 miles away from a house and, I believed, from another human being. I discovered later that there had been musterers only two or three miles away, but thinking myself alone, I felt alone, and had an uplift of the spirit that lasted all day and was, I now suppose, a form of religious ecstasy induced by hunger, lone-

liness, fear, suspense, and the intoxication of feel-

ing myself, in that thin mountain air. involved in a mystery that would never be solved, The second of these three days brought me. the nearest possible approach I have ever made to a Christmas of hard eating and drinking and high thinking. I was the guest cf a professor of literature who has made wine a dispeller of darkness and an ally in the war which every lonely man must wage against frustration and doubt. We began about six, and at first I found it difficult to surrender to the situation that had been so deliberately created.

But gradually everything became easy and beautiful. I drank and believed, ate and believed, talked, melted and sang because I believed. When it was too hot indoors we went out of doors, turned to music when we began to repeat ourselves in talk, sipped coffee when wine threatened us, returned to wine when dullness drew near, said things we had always wanted to say and knew that we were saying but neither could nor would have said without the wine, the friendship, and the occasion. Our talk, I remember, wandered from Miiton’s paradise to Dante’s, from ‘Holy Willie’ to Whitman, from Matthew Arnold’s "Now He Is Dead" to Job’s "I know that my Redeemer liveth." About midnight I had to meet a mellow assault on my agnosticism. Later I was myself the aggressor, calling Christians cowards, and resurrectionists stubborn fanatics who had not the grace to accept the fate of all other living creatures. It sounds raw and childish now, but at the time it was neither disturbing nor painful, so perfectly in tune had we become in the emotional areas not ruled by reason. It was not the first time I had eaten too much, drunk too much, talked too much,~ confessed too much, but it was the only time I ever felt so strongly. that the eating, the drinking, the talking, and the singingeven the arguing and occasional maudlin, silences-had worked together for good in all of us, been a sermon, @ sacrament, and a rejoicing all in one, a that offended neither mind nor spirit. . My third Christmas had a curiosity interest only, and already seems a little unreal. But I would have lost much if I had missed it. I was on the Mexican border of Texas, and spent the day half on one side and half on the other. On the American side I saw hard-headed business men gazing reverently at cribs and angels and infant Christs in department store windows, moving in an endless procession through a truck containing life-size figures in wax of the twelve apostles, or with maudlin expressions of surprise and delight walking round Christmas trees 50 feet high. On the Mexican side I passed from kneeling crowds in a cathedral to a bull fight that lasted for four hours. We were all, I suppose, God’s children, but for an inhibited New Zealander to stand on that bridge on the Rio Grande, with 100,000 non-puritan and mushy Protestants celebrating Christmas on one side, and 50,000 mediaeval Catholics celebrating ‘the same event on the other side was to feel neither awake nor asleep nor surprised nor excited but so completely confused and dumb that it was a wonder | aie I found my way back to my hotel. (To be continued)