WRITTEN WORD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 May 1941, Page 2

WRITTEN WORD

PEN MIGHTIER THAN SWORD. Today, as we scan the horizons of human thought and endeavour, as we search and seek to understand the hopes and desires, the fears and misgivings of men and women wherever they may be, the conviction deepens that there abides and persists the belief that Richelieu, wise but crafty Cardinal of an older century, was also right when he declared, not in jest, but with conviction born of experience and observation. "The pen is mightier than the sword." For. writes Mr Frank L. Perrin in the "Christian Science Monitor," we are convinced that even j in the days when men wrote little and j when few could read and interpret, and | since then until the present, the written word, translated into print and multiplied upon wave-lengths, has been the most powerful and persuasive human agency without which the civilisation we now seek to preserve and perpetuate would have perished from the earth. The persuasive power of truth, which begets understanding and neighbourliness, is implemented only 'by the written or spoken word. The best in human thought and impulse must, first of all. find expression. Our debt to the ages is due from those of succeeding generations in acknowledgment of the wisdom bequeathed in both sacred and secular chronicles. The pen in the hands of those who toiled endlessly to transcribe the words inter-: preted by sage and scholar left for our. time the Holy Writ, the poetry, and thej music, of teachers and preachers.