Partnerships are the foundation of our society. We believe very strongly in the development of long lasting partnerships. One of the partnerships we live by every day is that between men and machine. Just as in any other partnership one cannot flourish without the other. The following poem by Rudyard Kipling illustrates this very well and we therefore would like to share it with you.
THE SECRET OF THE MACHINES
We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,
We were melted in the furnace and the pit;
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design.
We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask;
And a thousandth of an inch to give us play
And now if you will set us to our task,
We will serve you four and twenty hours a day.
We can pull and haul and blank and draw and drive,
We can print and plough and heat and weave and light,
We can run and jump and swim and fly and dive;
We can see and hear and count and read and write.
But remember please the law by which we live;
We were not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,
If you make a slip in handling us, you die.
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings.
Be humble as you crawl beneath our rods,
Our touch can alter all created things.
We are everything on earth except the gods.
Though our smoke may hide the heavens from your eyes,
It will vanish and the stars will shine again;
Because for all our power and weight and size,
We are nothing more than children of your brain.
Rudyard Kipling
(1865 - 1936)
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