Generosity we should cherish in troubled times...

THE honoured tradition of philanthropy has burst into fresh life in recent years with t he emergence – mainly among the internet giants of California – of a new generation of astonishingly generous entrepreneurs.

Just as in the days of the ferocious but hugely generous Scottish- born st eel magnate Andrew Carnegie, or the idealistic Bradford wool baron Titus Salt, these new billionaires recognise that great riches mean great responsibilities and that from those to whom much has been given, much is required.

It is an ancient message far too often neglected in the savage cut and thrust of business, but i t never ceases to be important.

And even those who have their criticisms of figures such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates concede that they have done enormous amounts of good through such bodies as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

And now a new name is coming into prominence, the Salesforce billionaire Marc Benioff. Together with our sister newspaper the Daily Mail and its partners, he has helped to create Mail Force, which this week searched out, obtained and provided badly needed personal protective equipment (PPE) direct to the NHS, with the speed and efficiency that big bureaucracies find so hard to manage but which well-run charities can almost always achieve.

Mr Benioff told The Mail on Sunday: ‘I think the world is being shown a new set of values we can live by. It’s an evolution to truth, an evolution to a level of unity for humanity.’

This sort of generosity, driven by the same energy that created these vast new businesses, has an immense power to do good, to overcome the obstacles that too often slow down or prevent benevolent initiatives.

In these troubled times, it is good to have something to praise unreservedly.