PASSING ON THE TORCH.

White Ribbon, Volume 32, Issue 370, 18 April 1926, Page 17

PASSING ON THE TORCH.

We are apt to think that we have arrived at a period in the world’s . dory, when we can regard society its fixed and permanent, and not likely to change for the worse anyhow. Hut this is a mistake. There is no guarantee whatever that for the w'orld as a whole we have arrived at fixed conditions. We know from our history hooks how ancient civilisations arose, developed, flourished, and fell into decay. How difficult it wou’d have I>een for an Egyptian of Tutankhami n’s time, who knew Egypt as a great country which had flourished in greatness century after century, to believe that his native land would sink and fall into ruins for future civilisations to discover in amazement. So civilisation after civilisation has gone down. Of what does a nation consist? The answer is that it consists not of material things, but of human beings. Of what will the future consist? Of the children growing up now’. The children of to-day will grow up to make Hie future of the nations, and whether that future is to he great or small, depends on what the children of to-day learn to be. Life is as a torch which one generation hands on to another. Tht llaine may flicker, may revive, may burn steadily, or may be extinguished. Grown-ups are passing the torch to their children, who, in their turn, will have the chance to make their

nation a greater one still. Nothing is finally settled; nothing is finally done; life is an unsettled thing in which all has to he constantly done over and over again, done l>ettcr or done worse. Tile hope of the new generation is that it can profit by the past, and that if it does so, the past lives with it and helps. The future is in our hands to-day: we make it what we will.