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New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 352, 22 March 1946, Page 16

Sir-I have just read Mr. Meek’s fine and, if I dare say it, rather poignant, article though I confess that in the main the pity is mostly for myself who will "never go, where the branches blend and blur in Grantchester, in Grantchester" (having no brains to export me thither). Clearly .Mr. Meek’s conscience has demanded a justification for his action in leaving Home and Duty to get along without him, In his article he has really turned the justification into welldirected accusation. I am sorry that this young man of evident ability and talent should have felt lonely in his own country. Yet I am more sorry for New Zealand. Surely it is time we New Zealanders examined our collective conscience. We like to pride ourselves that we rate the highest average consumption of printed words in the world. Surely this printed matter must sadly lack in quality what it boasts in quantity else we would not have the recurrent phenomena of our best brains exporting themselves to more profitable pastures in search of the rich comradeship of understanding (and of other more substantial things). Loneliness is a beastly thing to bear. Most especially is it when it is the loneliness of the spirit that pervades what has remained of intellectual life in New Zealand. Pity the poor creative artist shivering upon his pillar, ely as Stylites, offering the unheeding crowd his forbidden fruit-knowledge. They are few who, in the hustle and bustle of getting and spending away their lives, stop to look up and offer if not homage, at, least "good-day." Fewer they who in glad meeting exclaim "Friend, well met." We have no millionaires to throw them crumbs from the rich man’s table. No government subsidies. Nobody seems to care. So off they go to England, and mostly never return, No one has expressed the tragedy of this state of

affairs more poignantly than Robin Hyde, both in her writings and in her tragic unhappy life. For the God of this country is named Mediocrity and his twin is Orthodoxy, Conform and the world will trudge with you. Don’t and you may soar but always alone. Likely as not, in the end you will come trailing a broken wing (or dust will lie thick upon the dreams). Be different and accept the label "queer." Eat for your daily bread that final bitterness of the spirit. Either that, or be acceptable to the crowd; and eat cake. If the bread is too sour and the cakes turn bitter-sweet in your mouth, fly away little bird, fly away. (Don’t come home limping the glory and the dream). And thou Jerusalem, look to thy walls! Having had my say, may I conclude by wishing Mr. Meek success in his chosen career. I am sure that he has sufficient of the poet in him to make a very good economist. (Had Karl Marx ofily been a poet as well!),

HARASS

(Ellerslie).