IDEALS AND REALITIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 113, 22 January 1940, Page 2

IDEALS AND REALITIES

YOUNG MEN ANALYSED

PRESENT AND PAST

"I am often asked if I consider the young man of to-day to be 'better* than the young man of yesterday. My considered opinion is that he is neither better nor worse. When I have addressed bodies of fine young men in the cities I have visitedy I have not thought of men as potential super men. I have merely hoped that their vigour, idealism and character might be developed and projected into the sphere of good citizenship, and that each might remain a distinct individual; for the true, good ciitizen is not a robot, but a living man who can both think and act straight."' Thus said Mr John J. Virgo., a vigorous Y.M.G.A. "worker, in his "Fifty Years Fishing For men."

"1 have found that young fellows at bottom do not vary so very much, "whatever their race or colour. Any such variations usually arise out of the difference in training during formative years. "Such training is too often on idealistic rather than realistic lines. Ideals are good, but they are dan-4 gerous. Mental and physical activities should be diverted into common sense channels rather than towards impossible goals. "I believe with Ernest Raymond that, if you examine people's morbid longings, you will arrive at the root idea, that if they would accept the world as it really is, it would, be a cure for nine-tenths of the mental sickness and repressions with which it is beset. The evil tendency is for mere slack thinking to disguise itself as idealism, for ideals to become perverted or exploited by selfish leaders towards unworthy ends. Let the dreamer keep his ideals, but keep them unadulterated and at all times let them face facts."