A Gloomy Moment in History

Posted on February 19, 2009 by Ginger Wilcox

This is reprinted with permission from an email sent to my company, Alain Pinel, by Alain Pinel Owner/CEO Paul Hulme. 

Did you read the editorial in yesterday’s paper?

THE AWFUL UNCERTAINTY OF THE FUTURE

It is a gloomy moment in history. Not in the lifetime of any man who reads his paper has there been so much grave and deep apprehension; never has the future seemed so dark and incalculable.

In France, the political cauldron seethes and bubbles with uncertainty. 

England and the English Empire is being sorely tried and exhausted in a social and economic struggle, with turmoil at home and uprising of her teeming millions in her far-flung Indian Empire.

The United States is beset with racial, industrial and commercial chaos – drifting, we know not where.

Russia hangs like a storm cloud on the horizon of Europe – dark and silent.

It is a solemn moment, and no man can feel indifference, which happily no man pretends to feel in the issue of events. 

Of our own troubles, no man can see the end………..

This editorial sounds pretty gloomy, doesn’t it? The writer evidently was weighted down by present problems and quite ready to sell our Nation short.  Did I say “present problems”?  Excuse me, please.  No, far from it.  This editorial appeared before 9/11, Vietnam, before the Korean conflict, before World War II, before the Depression of 1929, before the First World War in 1914, before the Panic of 1891, before the Civil War in 1865.

It was an editorial in Harper’s Weekly – October 10, 1857. One hundred and fifty-two years ago!  Yes, our country is going through difficult economic times, but hang in there. And remember, “The race goes not always to the swift nor to the strong, but to those who endure to the end.” 

This, too, shall pass.