of life we mean all. All microscopic
life, all lichens and mosses, all vegetation on land, in the water, in
the air. All insects, all birds, all fish, all quadrupeds. All two
legged animals. All centipedes and all those in between.

All forms of life have been assigned to our earth for a purpose, or have
made a place for themselves in the vast scheme of things or are clinging
parasitically to life after their assignments have been fulfilled or as
their usefulness is drawing to a close.

In a broad sense, that which lives on the earth, including mankind, has
a right or an opportunity to be here, living to the utmost of its always
limited capacity. How limited? Limited by the similar rights of all
other forms and aspects of life. In a word life on the earth--each life
and all life--is a shared opportunity.

Doubtless there are planners, regulators and arbitrators whose task it
is to decide, at any particular moment, who shall survive and who shall
perish. Actually we humans perform a part of that function every time we
thin out a forest, weed a garden, select our seed or teach a class. At
one stage of life we are the judges, at another stage we are the judged,
performing multiple tasks that must be fulfilled during each moment of
each day and each year.

In our Island Universe this earth is small. But in each backyard, on
each acre or square mile of earth, decisions may be made or are being
made that determine survival, utility, order, beauty. The results of
those decisions appear constantly in the life all about us.

We have all been in homes where neatness, usefulness and good taste
abound. We have been in villages and towns where the same conditions
prevailed. On the other hand, we have been in situations that can be
described only by the words littered, disorderly, chaotic. We have also
seen neat orderly homes in disorderly, slovenly neighborhoods. Much
depends upon who makes the decisions and whether the plans that are
carried into effect promote or obstruct the ultimate purpose.

At the moment, we have the satisfaction of orderly, beautiful
neighborhoods at the same time that we are surrounded by a disorderly,
littered, chaotic international battleground.

The earth with its oceans and its atmosphere is a storehouse containing
many if not most of the essentials for survival, growth and development,
for mankind as well as a multitude of other life forms. Perhaps its most
valuable single asset from the human vi