THE IDEALIST.

Hokitika Guardian, 28 July 1928, Page 1

THE IDEALIST.

"The Idealist can be the very best citizen; not only if bis ideals are related to faets and expressed in genuine effort. Blit much worse is the disillusioned idealist, the nmn who liecause his dreams have, not come true, and his belief in a cheap and easy way to national happiness lias turned out to be baseless, lias sunk back to cynicism and disbelief in everything and everyone. Of him we have many ns a result of the various upheavals of recent years. Ho is in fact one of their most worthless by-products. It is often supposed that as a nation our chief faults are intolerable, and an airy optimism which has no regard for facts. But in the case of many of us, the chief failings lie in just the opposite direction, in a slack tolerance of inefficiency, whether shown by ourselves or by other people, and in an undue pessimism and suspicious h/tss of other men’s actions and motives. A successful man is inevitably the butt for malicious insinuations. Too many have tlie idea firmly fixed in their minds that any man who has his hand on the tiller must also have his hand in tne till.—Mr Bolton Waller in “Hibernia on the Future of Ireland.”