Men and Machines

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 366, 28 June 1946, Page 5

Men and Machines

HE resignation of the Bishop of Wellington has in itself nothing to do with The Listener: We take notice of it only because it emphasises a fact to which we have more than once re-ferred-the physical cost of office. ‘The Bishop is leaving New Zealand because the weight of his ‘work here has broken his health. Whether it would have been the same story in another Dominion we do not know, but he is the second Bishop to resign for health reasons in a few months, and it is difficult to avoid the impression that it is dangerous in New Zealand to be important. We have pointed out before that only one Prime Minister this century-if we except those who merely filled a gap for a month’ or two-has retired in good health. The others have died in office or immediately after resigning because of sickness: Seddon, Massey, Ward, Savage. Democracy will have to learn to be more reasonable than that; more humane and more sensible. We can’t go on killing off the burdenbearers. or we shall find: ourselves reduced to men of wood. One difficulty in the political field is the Jength of the road to office-mak-ing a leader wait so long that he is tired before he arrives. There is no easy answer to that, though it would often be safer to risk the inexperience of youth than the weariness of age. But it is not a problem of age alone, or even of age primarily. Our leaders do not often break down because they are too old, but because we are too unreasonable in our demands jupon them. Instead of hedging them about with understanding, accepting, their limitations as human beings. and taking worries away from them, we press in on them at every opportunity and jostle one another in a selfish scramble for their attention. So four Prime Ministers die on our hands in 30 years, and a long list of other leaders in Church and State break down. It is time we used men as sensibly as we use machines, attending most carefully to those ‘we most need.