HAPPY NEW YEAR

with the thought in mind that our watchword for 1943 is

I live for those who love me, For those who know me true, For the heaven that smiles above me. And awaits my spirit too; For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance. And the good that I can do.

-G. L. Banks.

*:fi,1

On this New Year's day, the prayer of Robert Louis Stevenson seems very appropriate: "We beseech Thee, O Lord, to behold us with favor; weak men and women, subsisting under the covert of Thy patience. Be patient still. Suffer us yet a while longerwith our broken purposes of good, with our idle endeavor against evilsuffer us a while longer to endure, and (if it may be), help us to do better."

On this New Year'" ulr,*"rr*Americans are united in the same New Year's wish: that before this year is over we may win and end the war, and start working our way backward over the paths of peace. Among normal men, there can be no other ambition. Won't it be wonderful next January first to look back and say: "The war is over. A permanent peace has begun." Fortunately, those who say such hope is just wishful thinking, know no more about it than we do. When we stop hoping and believing in good things to come, we will be in a bad way, indeed. And of one thing you can be certain, the war-at least Germany's participation in itwill come unexpectedly. There is consolation in knowing that the day before it ends, it will look as though it were going on interminably. I think there is helpfulness in that opinion. We may have to take our time after that, hunting down the little monkey men in the \ilestern Pacific. But when Germany passes, doomsday for fhe'Japs'will be just a ma-tter of' tirnc-and careful shooting.

Here's a New Year's wish to all my lumber friends: "Don't lose your sense of humor." Hang on to it for dear life, for verily, it is the shock absorber and the bumper on the motor car of your existence. Sacrifices grow more tolerable and troubles more endurable if we can grin while they happen. And there is much evidence that the lumber folks can and do, keep smiling. If we let ourselves get all tense and grirn we won't be able to think our way through the problems of the times. So far as is humanly possible, a lnan should relax, and grin, and get all the joy out of life every day that he possibly can. Don't fgrget the priceless philosophy of the fat colored woman who said that the secret of her freedom from worry was that "when Ah sits, Ah sits loose." It's when you sit as tense and brittle as a pipestem, that you are in danger of cracking.

As Robert J. Burdette .. O.""ril"lly phrased it: "It is only when to the burdens and cares of today, we wilfully add the burdens of those two awful eternities-yesterday and tomorrowthat we break down. It isn't the experience of today that drives men mad. It is the remorse for something that happened yesterday, the dread of what tomorrow may disclose. Those are God's days. Leave thern with Him." Great advice, and practical. ***

The New Year has already brought the business people some things to be thankful for. We are assured that when the new Congress meets in January, something is going to be done to relieve them from the "blizzatd of questionnaires" as they call it, that has deluged and well-nigh overwhelmed them of late. Everyone knows that most of this stuff is stupid, impractical, and unnecessary. One desperate business.man wrote me the other day: "f am not going to fill out another questionnaire unless a U. S. Marshal comes after it." The whole country feels much the same way. A certain amount of information is no doubt necessary. But the Niagara of such stuff that has come,out of Washington to bottle-neck the mails and throttle the business people, is foolistr confusion. It strows signs of terminating.

Another gift the business people have dready received was the resignation of Leon Henderson. The question of on Page 8)