UNPLEASANT TRUTHS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26632, 1 December 1947, Page 6

UNPLEASANT TRUTHS

Sir,—When Mr John McCrae recently retired from the Dunedin City Council he told us one or two unpleasant things which otherwise we might not have heard. May X use the incident to point a moral? Unwittingly perhaps he was uncovering a fundamental and world-wide weakness in democracy. The weakness is that we do not want so much to hear the truth from public men as to hear pleasant things from them. We have plenty of instances of this in public life in New Zealand, especially at election times, but perhaps the best example occurred in the Home Country. The war, with its slogan of tears and sweat, was hardly over when there was an election. Although it was evident then that very difficult times would ensue—as they have ensued—no political party would 'face up to telling the people so at the election. The politicians judged, and no doubt correctly, that what the people wanted to hear was not so much the truth as something pleasant, and politicians vied with one another in giving the people what they wanted. This surely reflects on our democracy.—X am. etc.. Truth First. November 29.