PEOPLE MUST THINK

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20125, 20 December 1939, Page 13

PEOPLE MUST THINK

EUROPE’S TRAGEDY MENTAL LAZINESS EVILS APPARENT Europe's troubles to-day were the result of the inability of people to think for themselves, said Dr. G. H. Scholefield. Parliamentary Librarian, in an address at the breaking-up ceremony of the Wellington Girls’ College. Dr. Scholefield told his audience that a capacity for thinking was better than an encyclopaedic knowledge. To-day’s great trouble was mental laziness, a fault which was undoubtedly at the root of the tragic conditions existing in Europe. Dr. Scholefield instanced Russia, which, he said, had failed to live up to the hopes which many people saw in the 1917 revolution and had dropped back to intellectual serfdom.

After the last Great War, continued Dr. Scholefield, the youth of Europe in their confusion welcomed the derrtigods who promised them food, work, and self-respect, and it had to be admitted that the people had received some measure of those things from the dictators. The people gave themselves

body and soul to those men and gradually began to cease to think for themselves until to-day they had no freedom of thought or of politics. Three hundred million people were under the control of dictators in Russia, Germany, and Italy, and for them intellectual freedom had ceased to exist. In the minds of those people there was instilled a contempt for the people of all other countries and a hatred towards their neighbours. Fear of attack from outside was created as one of the weapons of dictatorship.

The explanation for the acceptance of Hitlerism by the German people, said Dr.. Scholefield, was that they were glad to accept anybody who would put an end to the internal troubles that came after the last war and would give them peace in their everyday life. Youth Misled. “The tragedy of Europe to-day is really the tragedy of the misleading of youth,” said Dr. Scholefield. “After the last war the youth of Europe turned from the ghastly result of it. hoping that they would never see i* again. Youth is good-natured and benevolent and it would never devise war as a diversion of its own, but when taken control of by dictators who contaminate the minds of youth and tell them to fight in self-defence against neighbours who are said to be hostile, it is natural that ' they should feel that way. So the youth of Europe has been led away by men who have taken control of their intellect—men of no tradition and in many cases of little education.” Those men had turned youth against youth in other countries.

Although the present war was not a war against the German people but against' those who were dominating them at present, said Dr. Scholefield, no international crisis to-day could be considered the responsibility of., only one section of a community. There would be no safety unless all the people developed the habit of thinking for themselves.