As a traffic slogan, “Safety First” may be eminently
suitable but as a motto for life, either of a nation or an individual, it would
be as deadening as a permanently acting brake. All the great deeds of history
have been achieved by people who were not thinking of safety, but had been
inspire to take risks by some great endeavor towards which they were working.
The history of the progress of civilization is the
story of the achievements of those who put adventure before safety. The
primitive men who dared to leave the safety of their native valley and cross
high mountains in search of a new land were the pioneers of discovery. Those
who ventured in home-made boats across the sea were even bolder. When we seek
to discovery what urged them to take such important steps, we find that there
was always some discontent with their conditions which made them feel that the
risk of danger. Was better than passive acceptance of a life that was far from
satisfying.
There are countless example in history of how men
have been urged by dissatisfaction to make some great discovery which has been
of the utmost value to the human race. It was a small group of men and women in
sixteenth and seventeenth century England who found the interference of
authority with their religious beliefs so intolerable that they were willing to
set out for the New World -- the recently discovered America, to found a new
home. Safety was the last thing these brave people could expect in their
venture.
In our present century. Great discoveries in
Science have been made by people who had no thought for their own safety, but were
eager to find a way to help their fellow creatures. The work of Madame Curie is
an outstanding example. Her life story shows how little she valued her personal
safety; her work brought her a constant succession of risks to health, wealth,
and life itself, but as a result of her discoveries, hundreds of sufferers from
the dreadful disease of cancer have received relief or cure.
The idea of Safety First, or Security, has been
taken by some political leaders in modem times as an idea of national life. It
is considered that the people of a nation need to feel safe, to know that - -
there will always be food, shelter, clothes, education, holidays and
entertainments whatever happens. Those who have not the brains, energy, or
initiative to work for these things for themselves must have them provided by
other people. A general acceptance of this principle would have a most
stultifying effect on progress. If all our people preferred the safe and
familiar life of some regular, humdrum occupation and began to calculate their
retirement pensions before they were twenty, there would be no one to lead the
world to new discoveries. We should glorify the income-tax collector rather
than the discoverer of the South Pole or the climbers of Everest.
Let us then keep “Safety First” in its proper place
in the Highway Code. But it does not mean that for our safety, are endanger the
lives of the other people. We must be considerate. All of his have the same
importance on this planet.