The Dominion. SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1944. PEACETIME UNIVERSAL SERVICE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 193, 13 May 1944, Page 6

The Dominion. SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1944. PEACETIME UNIVERSAL SERVICE

11l raising, at a meeting of the British-American Co-operative Movement in Wellington, the question of universal service after the war, Mr. F. Milner enunciated a principle deserving of greater attention than it has hitherto received. “Is it too much to ask of our youth,” he queried, “to recognize that public service must balance social security, that rights and privileges, concessions and benefactions,! demand correlative duties and responsibilities ?” The speaker’s following remarks on the point were apparently framed on some comment by the London Economist upon a suggestion in the report of a British committee on the post-primary curriculum, which recommended: If, after the war some form of public service were to be required, we can foresee educational values resulting from a period " of six months given by boys and girls drawn from varying circumstances of life to work of national importance—in industry and agriculture, at sea, in the social services, and in similar services no less than in the armed forces. Such a period so spent might do much to fuse the country into a single whole with a common pur-. ’ pose and a common’ understanding. In extending its endorsement to the above recommendation, 7 lie Economist suggests that the principle upon which it is founded might be given even wider and more intensive application, though careful to emphasize that it might be difficult of practical implementation. The principle itself, however, is too important to be ignored on that ground, for ft touches a vital essential of democratic living, namely, community service—co-operative effort by all for the good of the whole. “To assume —as it is assumed now—” observes The Economist, “that the whole cost of the effort to abolish poverty and insecurity can be paid in money terms is to harbour a dangerous delusion. Money alone can no more buy security than it can buy victory.” The truth to be firmly grasped is that social security in all its aspects depends first, last, and all the time upon the attitude of those who benefit, toward their responsibilities for its maintenance. These responsibilities are summed up in the word “work,” not in the narrow material sense of wage-earning, but in the broader conception of human effort in all vocations.as a co-operative contribution to the service and the betterment of the community. The idea sponsored by the British Education Committee above-mentioned is that, the kind of universal service suggested would enable such a conception to take root m the minds of the up-coming generation and colour their attitude toward work and community service. The present-day tendency is to place emphasis on “rights” without corresponding emphasis on reciprocal duties. As The Economist observes in this connexion.: “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 as solely a recipient and where, when the crisis came, it was difficult to persuade him that his duty to the community of which he is a member not only overshadowed all his rights, but was the only ultimate safeguard for Jiim.”