A STATESMAN'S SPEECH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 800, 19 November 1954, Page 5

A STATESMAN'S SPEECH

sir,-The criticism levelled at your editorial by G.H.D. in your issue of October 22 is a typical illustration of the "closed mind." Arthur Koestler, who joined the Communist Party, left it disillusioned, and co-operated in writing The God that Failed, says: "The mentality of a person who lives inside a closed system of thought, Communist or other, can be summed up in a single formula: He can prove everything he believes, and he believes everything he can prove." If the cold-blooded slaughter. ing of human beings is to be universally accepted as justification for total condemnation of those employing it, a backward glance along the historical road furnishes matter of interest. The extermination of the Albigenses, the Inquisition, St Bartholomew Massacre, Franco in Spain and the religious massacres in 1941 in Yugoslavia, on this basis of judgment, form grounds for totally condemning the religious communities responsible. * Communism is a closed system forbidding the free functioning of the human mind. The believers in, or victims of, any closed system of thought can never concede any good in any part of any other closed system. Hope for mankind lies in the continued functioning of the liberal spirit and everlasting resistance to dogmas-teligious, political or social-that stifle thought and obstruct the full spiritual development .of the human being.

J. MALTON

MURRAY

(Oamaru).

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS P, G. Flynn (Auckland): See page 121. N. R. Williams (Te Awamutu): Sorry; it arrived too late. : Miss E. Morgan (Opotiki): You are right, and we were wrong. Peter Pan also won the Melbourne Cup. twice. i . S. Lewis (Cambridge): The. discussion in which Mary Field takes part will be heard from other YA stations early next year. Bohumir Novak (Wellington): You are getting away from the subject under discussion. And vour use of the word "defamation" is a, little careless. ; Mrs, E. Reid (Temuka): Thanks for suggestion, but afraid arrangements for that periad already completed. R. A. Brinsden (Wellington): You begin by offering an explanation and end by asking for ene, (1) The balance was, thoroughly tested and satisfactory. A microphone t arily failed. (2) One player did not notice that the studio was off the air, at the other's request, while he tuned. (3) Unexplained; otherwise unreported. Mrs. Lily C. Rayner (Rai Valley): Minis-. ters very rarely fail to attend, but recordings. are kept in case they are unavoidably delayed. or prevented. In the instance you cite one such emergency was followed the day after by’ another, The recording used on the first oceasion was inadvertently used again on the