APPEALS TO YOUTH

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 107, 22 May 1937, Page 4

APPEALS TO YOUTH

During the week we liave had some all too brief extracts from separate appeals made to the youth of the Old Country by two men who stand high in public place and esteem throughout the Ei.lpire. One was delivered by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the Albert Hall, the other by the Archbishop of Canterbury in Westminster Abbey. Both were made all the more impressive by the circumstances under which they were spoken. ,^Mr. Baldwin was on the eve of making a voluntary end to a long and a;rduous political career in which he had met with many success and not a few reverses. Archbishop Lang was fresh from conducting within the same sacred edifice the solemn ceremonies by which our new King was consecrated to the service of his people. Both may hope to have exercised some influence for good not only among the great audiences of young people to whom their words were directly addressed, but a,lso among the youth of the whole Empire to whom those words will come in the form of the printed page. With us out here, to whom the Archbishop is but little known other than as the head of the established Church of England, the words of the statesman who has been so long in the forefront of Imperial affairs and has earned so high a place in the regard of its many peoples are the more likely to carry weight. In his own life, though he would be the last to suggest it, he has set an example that bears living testimony to the sincerity of the injunctions he lays upon those who are later on to take up the burden of government. 'It was the bitter cry of many after the Great War, still maintained by some, that the youth of the Empire had been sacrificed to make atonement for the mistakes of their elders. How much or how little this accusation was justified we are not even yet in a position to judge. The almost incessant turmoil that has been the inevitable aftermath of so violent a disturbance of international relations has precluded any really cairn and dispassionate judgment being formed. For that we shall have to await the passage of still further years until the enmities and hostilities aaroused are abated. In the meantime, however, there can be no question as to the need for the youth of the present generation, from whom our future democratic rulers are to be drawn, fitting themselves to play their part with sound discretion and so to avert any s like accusation from being laid against them in their turn.

This, too, has to be said not only of those who may have aspirations to be among the political rulers, but of the whole mass to whom the choice of those rulers is committed by the political system under which we live. Under that system it is really upon them that the main responsibility lies and it is they who must educate themselves in such a way as to size up the merits of those who offer themselves. as their representatives where the ruling is done. There is just as much need for clear thinking among the electors as among those whom they elect. In their wise choice of leaders lies the whole fate of democratic government, which is now being put to the most severe test it has ever experienced. "Democracy," said Mr. Baldwin, to his youthful listeners, "is crying out for leadership. The next generation — it may be you — will have to save democracy from itself ... I proclaim my faith in the Empire which defies neither the State nor its rulers. The old doctrine of the divine right of Kings is gone, but we have no intention of replacing it with a new doctrine of the divine right of States." These are pregnant words that carry an infinity of meaning and are well worth pondering by both young and old among those who wish to see preserved the liberties that have been gained through so many centuries of struggle. What we have to guard against is the surrender of those liberties to the dictatorship of a new oligarchy, claiming to act for the State, that differs but little from the dictatorship of the individual and is all the more dangerous because it is disguised. To youth, in particular, it offers many lures and it is for youth to qualify itself to distinguish the substance from the shadow.