Norwich bulletin., 1917-06-16
Sunday Morning Talk
SAFETY LAST.

All good maxins can be abused, and the one posted so conSpicuously in public places in recent years is no exception. The need for caution must continually be dinned into the thought of our reckless generation. To take needless chances of any. sort is akin to crime Yet the familiar maxim does not sound the whole of human duty If all men everywhere rHIt safety first" many of the finest i'm pulses and actions of. life would be for worthy lives, safety is to be reck- oned not the first but the laet consid- eration.
 To strive harder for personal avoid ance of danger than for the success of a good cause is to fall below the hero level The men who run our trains and plot our ships, who mine our coal and sTnelt our iron etc, are right Iy pledged to as safe practices as may be, but it cannot be said tha tthey put home in rocking chairs or N1e piazza, or toasting their toes by the fire. The element of danger enters into every red blooded occupation
 Safety first, if carried to iss logical conclusion, would condemn nearly all the heroisms of all time. The saints and martyrs and benefactors have duty first. If duty has called them into paths of danger they have not hesitated to take the risk. Like Ad- miral Farragut in Mobile Bay. whose terse remark about torpedoes has be- come an American tradition, they have ignored perils when the thing must be done
 It is by men and women who have not counted their lives dear unto themselves, in view of some cause To be established or some great end to be gained, that all our blessings have come to pass.
 A great host of our young country men must soon be summoned to abandon the well ordered pursuits of peace and to plunge into the most dam gerous form of work the world knS-s. It were a sad outlook for us all shouh they prove unwilling to go. War has not been a sheltered and innoouous business in any age, and under mod er1l conditions it IS a consumnate hor- TOT. No soldier is safe, or expects to be. Any minute he may be called to the supreme sacrifice. It is the ele- ment of heroism that we honor in the soldiers profession.
 A nation wholly committed to the safety first principle is alredy dying at the core It is capable of no gIor- ious deeds nor sublime sacrifices. Conserving its own resources, look ing out tor itself, it grows stale and barren, like the Dead Sea that takes in, but never gives anything out. It loses it's life by trying to save It.
 Tie parable of the talentS Is wholesome gospel for anyone W'no has posted a big safety first" sign over the door of his house of life. A man buried his talent in the earth because he was afraid of the market. His mas ter ordered the talent taken from him and given to the man who had shawn himself willing to go ahead and in vest. There is a risk in everything: in investing money, in planting pota- toes, in walking downtown to business tomorrow morning. But the heaviest risk of all is in standing still and marking time. Nothing worth while ever resulted from that co4urse.
 When the Apostle Peter would turn our Lord back from Jerusalem where persecution and death awaited him. he was reminded that there are occa- sions when a man is to put self in terest entirely out of sight. Get See behind me; thou art an offense unto me; for thou mindest not the things of God'' The heroic soul must learn to say with Paul: '1 hold not my life dear unto myself, in comparison of ac- complaining my course
 For men. intitutions, or. nations the. pathway to honor may he a sublime disregard of all prudential consf1era- tions. Safety first" is a slogan on the level of many mans need, but let of real heroes is pitched to a higher key Such as these have been willing to put safety last. They have dared to take risks for righteousness sake. THE PARSON.