Advice to the Rich Young Man

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 656, 1 February 1952, Page 9

Advice to the Rich Young Man

by

SUNDOWNER

DECEMBER 27

postman brought me this pleasant note this morning from a transplanted -Englishman; "How strange that you should pick on docks as an illustration of the inscrutability of the ways of God! 1 remember when I was 14, before cur family emigrated, how ' my old nurse used to apply dock leaves as a cure for the stings of nettles. She

maintained that wherever you found stinging

nettles there were docks close by. From this fact she adduced proof of God's infinite mercy. Even at that time I remember thinking that this might have been better manifested by the omission to create stinging nettles in. the first place. But, like yourself, I have since realised the unprofitable nature of such speculations."

DECEMBER 28

FJ * we WOULD not have believed a fewe years ago that I would live long enough to hear a New Zealand Prime Minister talking about the rationing of

bread. When there were hardly enough white men here to build roads and bridges the Maoris were sending wheat to Australia--- and growing it in the North Island. Now we cant grow enough wheat in both islands to fill our own bread bins, and the Gov- . ernment can’t think how to make us grow it. Thirty years ago it was my painful task to write an article every week or two pointing out that if New Zealand would not grow enough wheat for its own consumption the day might come when it would not be

able to buy enough for love or money. I found it a painful job because I was then, I thought, almost a free-trader.

Week after week when I issued my wearisome warning

I would be haunted by a secret fear that I was writing uneconomic nonsense; and at last I could not go on. But I could write the same articles today with both hands-breathe on them, blow on them, and send them in to every corner of New Zealand. with a clear conscience. I could not, however, tell jthe Government how to persuade the farmer to grow the wheat. I could make ‘out a case for compulsion that would be as simple, as clear, as just, and as unanswerable as the advice to the rich young man in the 19th chapter of the first Gospel; and it would be just as effective. I am not good enough to accept it myself, and not impudent enough to ask others to accept it. I am a selfish man,* and conclude after long observation that farming breeds more sinners than saints. If lambs are more profitable than wheat, lambs and not wheat will fill our pad-

docks and our half empty heads. Vivant oves, cedant panes! To hell with the baker! The dough is in the lambs! * % * So it is for those with land that will fatten lambs. And the fate of those who can but won’t grow wheat is as certainly in the bread bins of half a million housewives who will wake from their long sleep when bread costs half a crown a loaf. ge te hy

DECEMBER 31

‘one of Jim's paddocks I looked again to make sure that t!ey were real. One was a hack and the other two halfdraughts, and I am not sure that they. felt real themselves. They certainly looked uneasy-a little embarressed | HEN I saw three horses today in |

when they saw me_ getting over the fence and more

than a little suspicious. But they behaved precisely as horses cid before tractors made zoo exhibits of them. | First they lifted their heads and watched me, and when they saw that I was moving in their direction they all moved quietly to the farthest corner of the paddock and turned round to face me. Then they "obliged," as ‘a lady gardener in a recent Countryman said about a passing elephant: a curious habit which I have not observed in horses unless they are free. A tethered horse obliges when he is stimulated intestinally. A free horse, when he is planning how to retain his freedom, obliges under another stimulus that I have never quite understvod, unless thinking disturbs him inside. But it seldom fails; and* when I see that sign I watch carefully for the next development, which is usually a move .away into a safer position or a sudden break out of the corner into which I heve been trying to drive him. For although horses are not intelligent they are cunning; although their heads are nearly all bone their brains are accurate recorders and good retainers of the few tricks they acquire from man. I have never been able to decide whether they have more or less intelligence than cows. They are better learners of the lessons of obedi-ence-I am quite unable to teach Elsie the meaning of "Whoa!"--but they lose their heads more easily, stampede more often, and have almost no sense at all in bogs or on a long rope. Elsie threw herself the first day I tethered her, but she lay without panic until I freed her. and has never thrown herself since. Perhaps I am _ beginning to forget what horses are like. A few years ago I thought it not impossible that we would one day send a horse to Parliament, and I would still give a trotter a chance if Addington were an electorate. But I don’t think those horses in Jim’s paddock were candidates. One of them had a perfect face for politics, and kept. turning it my way from whichever side I approached; but in the end he ran away and left me. They were, I think, just strays-fugitives from work with Scottish ancestors who were looking for clover for Hogmanay. (To be continued)