WISE MEN OF OLD

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXI, Issue 2781, 28 November 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

WISE MEN OF OLD

MAY BE AS WRONG AS WISE • MEN OF TO-DAY. There is probably a commercial value in cheerfulness. Those who preach a gloomy doctrine in these days can be reminded that for generations past troubles have not been unknown and that even some of the world’s greatest men have made the mistake of looking on the gloomy side of things. William Pitt said: “ There is scarcely anything around us but ruin and despair.” Wilberforce, in the early 1800’s said: “I dare not marry,'the future is so dark and unsettled.” Lord Grey in 1819: “Believed everything was tending to a convulsion.” The Duke of Wellington, on the eve of his death (1851), thanked God he would “be spared from seeing the consummation of ruin that is gathering about us.” Disraeli (1849): “ In industry, commerce and agriculture there is no hope.”

Queen Adelaide said she “had only one desire, to play the part of Marie Antoinette with bravery in the revolution that was coming in England.”

Lord Shaftesbury (1848): “Nothing could save the British Empire from shipwreck.”

But the fact remains that we came through all right, and shall do so again.