Democracy or Quinces?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 150, 8 May 1942, Page 4

Democracy or Quinces?

enough shots you will probably hit the target somewhere, a Dunedin correspondent opens a vigorous fusillade on us in this issue, And she certainly hits us now and again. If we have done, and in some cases done more than once, most of the things she suggests we should do, she reminds us of some things that we perhaps should have done, and have not. We have not, for’ example, yet become members of any of the numerous "women’s organisations of this country". Perhaps we are missing a good deal of "life" by staying out. We have not attempted to label the art schools of the Dominion. Again we have perhaps been wrong. We have made no explorations into the heads and hearts of divinity students. Here, too, we have probably missed something. The heart of a divinity student in wartime must be a strange place; his head a stranger place; but it does not follow that we would be admitted to one or the other if we approached out of idle curiosity. But our correspondent’s policy may be sound if her illustrations have been chosen a little rashly. We have devoted more space to stomachs than to heads on those pages that she seems to have read most carefully. It is the old problem of the piper and the tune. We are supported largely-we do not say mainly-by women. For every woman who is interested in art or divinity or education or democracy, ten are interested in cooking. Shall we give them what they pay for, or what we think they ought to be willing to pay for? Shall we in fact assume a higher authority still-insist that the many shall be guided by the few, the dull ‘by the clever and the thoughtless by the earnest and in-formed-and drag them all on improving journeys round the insides of other people’s skulls? The whole history of journalism, and the much longer history of liberty, forbid such high-handedness. Is it in fact true, in spite of her engaging manner, that our correspondent really wants to know what is going on in the New Zealand head at the present time? She knows. She is as aware as we are that what fills the heads of nine New Zealanders out of ten is not auinces or films or community centres or the fate of fiddlers, but the advance of New Zealand’s enemies. So long as that advance continues The Listener’s first task is to do what it can within the limits imposed by its purpose ‘and name to thwart, confuse, attack, and destroy those who are driving so boldly to destroy us — heads, hearts, and stomachs, orchestras, art schools, and pantries. () N the general principle that if you fire