DOCTORS IN WAR

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3767, 10 June 1936, Page 6

DOCTORS IN WAR

The statement that “the Church sent up prayers to heaven during the Great War that must have astonished the angels” was made in a speech to medical students by Dr. 0. H. Mayor (James Bridie, the dramatist), when presenting prizes at the Anderson College of Medicine in Glasgow, where he was once a pupil and teacher. “About 20 years ago —and it is a solemn thought that many of you here can’t remember it —the people of the civilised world were engaged in smashing, tearing, torturing, suffocating, drowning and starving each other,” said Dr. Mayor. “If one is to judge by results they were doing this for no reason at all. It seems to have been all a piece of natural cruelty, stupidity and mischief. Almost every estate in the realm, every grade of society, every profession, cheerfully played its part in creating this mischief. The law, the guardian of abstract justice, prostituted its trust and twisted logic to the devil’s ends. Men of letters, who were given their gifts that they might tell mankind the truth, spent all their energies in inventing exciting lies. The medical profession—British, French, German or Russian—came out of it all pretty well. They can think of it and hold up their heads. They went through filthy battlefields, dodging the flying metal, pulling their comrades out of danger, tending the hurt and sick without much distinction between friend and enemy.”

In reference to medical men and literature, Dr. Mayor said: “Some branches of literature such as the composition of novels and the writing of verse can be practised at any time of the day by anyone who can read and write. Given a certain type of paranoia, in which voices are habitually heard, it is easy to write plays.” (Laughter.)