DOCTORS OF SORTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21598, 19 March 1932, Page 14

DOCTORS OF SORTS

TO THE EDITOR

Sir, —It seems really a pity that in these serious times letters should be written applauding the esesntially worthless prescriptions for the restoration to happiness of a bewildered world that are being offered in floods by bishops, moderators, persons, and ministers of all kinds, in and out of the public press. No one. it is to be hoped, would want to say anything unkind of the Rev. Mr Macarthur and his professional mates; they are quite sincere in the belief that the secret of commercial restoration is in the hands solely of a particular section of the fixedsalary class of citizens who are not in commerce at all, and under that singular conviction they naturally and quite worthily feel the urge to instruct the rest of us. whose annual earnings are anything but fixed just now, in how it is to be done. That is all right, and probably they would be wrong to keep what they believe to be these portentous secrets to themselves. But it is a weak point about the gratifying applause which some of them earn that this is offered for the most part, not to their commercial and political sagacity, which, after all, is the crying need of the day, but to another element altogether, connected principally with the significance of the costume they wear. Such commendation, ■ however well meaning, goes wide of the mark; it flatters the propounder, but does not help the rest of us: and when, influenced by it to give the propounder’s prescription a trial in our desperate perplexities, illusion and disappointment are the inevitable result. That is why it is a pity that such commendation should be publicly offered at all.—l am, etc., Statecraft.