AIDS TO VITALITY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 210, 3 August 1940, Page 2

AIDS TO VITALITY.

NEWSPAPERS’ FUNCTION. Newspapers as institutions for increasing vitality and combating “despondency and gloom” were praised by Dr William Lyon Phelps, emeritus professor of English at Yale University, at a gathering at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, recently. “The money invested in a newspaper is one of the greatest aids to vitality we have, because the paper provides interests that will take us out of ourselves,” Dr Phelps said when addressing 125 graduates. “The more wo are interested in things beyond ourselves the better wo can combat despondency and trouble and tlie longcr'wc live.” Dr Phelps asserted that most ministers, priests, and physicians were readers of the sports pages, “because they arc the pages of victory.” “If we are interested in every page of the paper we have sources of information from all over the world feeding us,” lie added. “You cannot get out of despondency and gloom by will-power. You can do it only by diverting the mind to other things.” Suggesting that the reader try to find something which interests him on every page of his newspaper, Dr Phelps said. “If you find subjects on 10 or 12 pages that divert you, your vitality is increased just that much.”