The World's Suffering
WE are sealed off from much of the world’s suffering. Anyone who is not and who has not a saint’s capacity to bear it we describe as one who "has seen too much." And though we should be, and are being, constantly challenged
to extend the range of our sympathies it is surely pointless to allow such an influx of emotion as would cripple us. As I listened to the BBC’s The Forgotten People, an examination of the refugee problem, from 3YC, there were many times when I thought the enger verging on hysteria too heavily laid on. Apart from this one felt that it was a programme essentially for ‘Governments rather than private individuals, not because we wish to pass the buck, but because only a Government could grant the effective sum or make the necessary provisions to allay such misery. In millions of instances the individual would be willing to contribute his mite, but without direction or focus it is only a drop in the ocean. This is the kind of thing that the men who take "refuge in figures" know. And it was a further confusion in this *programme that "figures" were necessarily thought to atrophy sympathy. This is no more true than that the surgeon’s knife connotes cruelty.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19540212.2.24.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 760, 12 February 1954, Page 12
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215The World's Suffering New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 760, 12 February 1954, Page 12
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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