THE FOOLS WERE RIGHT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 September 1941, Page 7

THE FOOLS WERE RIGHT

INCIDENT DURING A CRISIS. “We democratic people know in our bones that the eccentric man, the heretic, the queer fellow, the odd man out is essential to our own development of spirit. We may not like him, . may even be tempted sometimes to torment him, but we cannot live and grow without him,” said Mr St. John Ervine in a recent address. “If there had never been discontented men demanding changes against the will of the authorities we should still be reading by rushlight, if, that is to say, we were capable of reading at all. A profane polititician, Lord Melbourne, once remarked that on a certain occasion of crisis in this country, all the wise men were on one side and all the damned fools on the other. ‘And, by God,’ he ended, ‘the damned fools were right!’ We must be careful how we treat the damned fools, for we do not know which of them is our saviour. It is the virtue of the democrat that, in spite of his irritation with such people, he gives them leave to live. But the dictator does not and dare not tolerate dissent. He demands uniformity of mind and purpose, and this, in the encl, results in stagnation and death.”