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Timaru Herald, Volume CLV, Issue 22789, 13 January 1944, Page 3

“It Is an old story that wisdom in conduct is not learnt from books or technical study, but from experience and character. We know what we mean when we talk of men or women of 'sound judgment’ or of 'common sense.’ We distinguish them from the expert whom we rather distrust,” wrote Dr. A. D. Lindsay, Master of Balliol, In his recent book. The Modern Democratic Society. “We should defend this attitude by saying that the expert is a specialist: that what is wanted for conduct Is all-round experience of people and things. ‘Sound judgement’ or ‘common sense’ are not the products of Ignorance. They are produced by experience of a certain kind by responsibility, by a varied acquaintance with men and things and by an all-round experience. The expert or specialist on the other hand has probably paid for his expert knowledge by having had to undergo a long training which has removed him from the ordinary rough and tumble of life. He has probably not had to check his judgments by practical experience. He has perhaps not had to pay for his mistikes. He has become ‘academic’ in the bad sense of that term.” • • • » “If our withdrawal from world affairs after the last war was a contributing factor to the present war and to the economic instability of the last 20 years—and it seems plain that it was —a withdrawal from the problems and responsibilities of the world after this war would be sheer disaster.” writes Wendell WUlkie in his book One World. “Even our relative geographical isolation no longer exists. At the end of the last war not a single plane had flown across the Atlantic. To-day that ocean is a mere ribbon, with aeroplanes making regularly scheduled flights. The Pacific is only a slightly wider ribbon in the ocean of the air, and Eurone and Asia are at our very doorstep."