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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 8, Issue 7 (November 1, 1933)

Confidence

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Confidence

Trust thyself,” said Emerson; “every heart responds to that iron string.” The time is now when individual and national confidence are strongly required to bring about a term of better times.

Self-confidence, the germ from which selfhelp grows, takes its rise first from bodily health.

As the healthiest people in the world, with the lowest death-rate (8.02 per thousand last year) and the greatest expectation of life, New Zealanders have every reason to be confident on the count of physical condition.

On their records for productive capacity, mental endowment, moral strength, and spiritual vigour they have no less grounds for reassurance.

Individually and nationally they have an average of achievement, in every field of honourable endeavour, that will bear comparison with the best of other nations.

But there are reserves of power, seldom drawn upon, which conscious thought and decision can bring into action for the good of the individual and the community, and it was a clarion call to the fuller use of these reserves which the great American philosopher whose aphorism is quoted above, sounded in his energising essay upon selfreliance.

More self-confidence amongst individual New Zealanders at the present time will lead to enterprise from which national benefits will accrue, and more national confidence will help in the revival of business as no other single factor could.

It is therefore a most encouraging sign of the times to find that in the Capital City a definite movement to establish firmly the right state of mind has been started, by a union of all the group organisations of Wellington to promote a National-Confidence Carnival there in the current month from the 18th to the 25th November.

The Carnival is planned as a demonstration of national development, as an exhibition of national strength, and as a proof that this Dominion is still in the lusty years of its youth, with rich promise of future greatness if the people will only have faith in themselves during the present real, though unrealised, floodtide of opportunity.

The Carnival is on a scale never before attempted in New Zealand.

It is highly spectacular, richly historical, and eloquently dramatic.

It will have all the fun of the fair, combined with “pomp and feast and revelry, with mask and antique pageantry” by land and sea, all on the grand scale.

It should draw visitors from every part of the Dominion as well as from overseas, and should make a lasting impression in revived confidence, revived business, and a return of that spirit of joyous endeavour from which the best achievements of mankind emanate.