RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF CITIZENS

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 191, 11 May 1944, Page 4

RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF CITIZENS

Service To Community COMPULSORY TRAINING OF YOUTHS ADVOCATED

“Is it too much to ask of our youln to recognize that public service must balance social security, that rights and privileges, concessions and benefactions demand correlative duties and responsibilities,” said Mr. F. Milner, principal of the Waitaki Boys’ High School, at a meeting of the British-American Co-operation Movement in Wellington yesterday. “None dare live in a fool’s paradise. Our security must be validated by force aud that is our fighting strength. The nation that neglects to utilize to the full the idealism and devotion of its youth wilperish.” Urging a national system of cornpul sory youth training for health, citizenship, national service and defence. Mr. Milner said there was wide recognition of the urgency of this issue in at least all English-speaking countries. “The most obvious and familiar form of public service is in the armed forces of the Crown,” he said. “After the last war conscription was abolished. After this war, circumstances will be different in two respects. First, there will be far less confidence than there was in 1919 that victory for the Allies means the end of force in international affairs; it seems probable that the general view will be in favour of the maintenance of considerable and efficient, forces. Secondly, the supply of young citizens of the mosi eminently military ages will be smaller and declining. It is so probable as io be almost certain that forces of the required size will require conscription for their maintenance. 'Whether conscription of women will be maintained is doilbtful, but young men will almost certainly have a period of compulsory national service in the armed forces. Danger Seen.

Referring to public service in other fields, Mr. Milner said that if education was a training for life, then the idea of service to the community deserved a place in it as well as the cultivation of the individual personality and training in mental habits.

“The argument, however, is wider,” he continued. “It is not concerned only, or even chiefly, with citizens in graining, but with citizens in full enjoyment of membership in the community. The mental training of the school is wasted if it is not used after the child leaves school. And training in public service would be wasted if after the nineteenth year was passed there was ho public service to give. A - general and continuing system of public service is a necessary counterpart to the universal and embracing system of social security that is now under construction. The argument that social security would unflermine individual initiative is nonsense—the more so when it is urged by comfortable persons who have never known the timidity and numbness or initiative that come from fear of insecurity. The danger is not lack of initiative but lack of responsibility. There have been examples in , this war of countries where the individual has been so fully encouraged to look to the State for the assurance of. his rights that he has thought of himself solely as recipient—and where, when the crisis came, it was difficult to persuade him that this duty to the community of which he was a member not only overshadowed all his rights, but was the only ultimate safeguard for them. Not all these countries speak foreign languages and not all are on the Continent of Europe. “When social services were on a small scale, it could be plausibly argued that ‘the rich will pay.’ But they will soon be on a scale far beyond the much-dimin-ished capacity of the rich alone to support —even if such a policy could be accepted. Social security henceforward; will have to be a co-operative venture, dependent, broadly speaking, on the efforts of those who benefit from it. If, then, there are to be rights from the grave, there will be a parallel extension of duties —not merely the duties in the abstract, but of duties closely related to the rights. Public service and social service should be the obverse and the reverse of the very same medal. The ideal is that social service should; be largely manned by' citizens rendering their public service.” Training for Boys.

He advocated training for all boya on comprehensive lines for national citizenship and service. There was no safety in supine unpreparedness. There was a, common responsibility for efficient service. The utilization of the thousands of military training cantos available after the war would make ideal training facilities. “If a full year were needeel.” he said, “it would obviously be difficult to find still more time for other forms of public service. Two years out of 70 may not seem, on an absolute comparison, too much to give to the community in return for that the commu’nity gives, or is to give, in return. But it would obviously require a considerable change in present ideas —and involve considerable reorganization in the universities and the professions—before so long a gap could be required. , . ' . “The late Secretary of the American Navy, Colonel Frank Knox, claimed that today’s international situation demanded from the boys of America the virile qualities of the old pioneering days. The price of national freedom or progress was sacrifice and discipline. The human i-ace must learn that spiritual elevation and character were the result of sacrifice, toil and self-discipline. Physical examination of army recruits showed the danger pt idleness and luxury. Only one man in five of the applicants was able to satisty the physical standard for entry into the United iStates Marines.. The war census showed a physical drift in the erica The recruits were physically flabby and muscularly degenerate. More than za per cent, of army and navy recruits hati to be rejected. The same evidence ot physical deterioration in in New Zealand. Of the 60,000 whiten listed, 17,000 were unfit service Outlining the work of the Civil tan Con servation Corps in America, Mr. Milne said that 5,000,000 had passed through that service, their ages ranging from It to 23. The corps had erected more than 40,000 buildings, made 50 - (W 2 >^3L bl I ® a ,?„ ’ built 4000 large dams, 40,000 large bridges, and taken over the forestry work for 29,000.000 acres of timber It planted out 250,000.000 trees to check erosion and had a scope of activities embracing 150 major types of work. “The virtues of such work are needed just as vitally in our own land, he said. ‘‘Youth service must 'he reorganized as part of youth training —as a return for educational and social privileges which our nation confers on youth at the cost of the people as a whole. Voluntary service at Pts best is both partial inequitable. Greatest of all is the physical'need for security, for a continual recruitment of well-trained citizens who have realized the thrill of physical fitness and will not easily degenerate from such a standard.