Warning of Danger of Moral Collapse

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 54, 7 March 1944, Page 4

Warning of Danger of Moral Collapse

BREAK-UP OF HOME LITE The break-up of family life as the result of conditions imposed by the war was indicted as the greatest potential danger to the English-speaking nations —with special emphasis on New Zealand—by Miss Elsie Bennet, general secretary of the Y.W.C.A., Auckland, in a frank and deeply impressive analysis of the situation when addressing the Palmerston North Rotary Club yesterday. Answering the oft-repeated excuse that “it was the same in the last war,” and that a serious declension in a nation’s moral standards and conduct was inevitable in such times of crisis, Miss Bennet said emphatically that it’ was not the same in the iast war. “Family life was not shattered so disastrously in the last war as it is in this war,” declared the speaker. “This is particularly the case in New Zealand. Women were never previously taken from their homes along with their husbands and their growiug children left without guidance and protection as is being done to-day.” The speaker outspokenly attacked the policy of the latest regimentation of older age groups of women into industry, declaring not only that it would have been unnecessary if fully organised use had been made of the available manpower resources of the country, but that the women now being drafted were just those whom it was most necessary to keep in the homes to prevent a disastrous deterioration of that asset in our national life which was the very foundation on which the nation's moral and spiritual virtues were erected, and without which a nation must inevitably perish. Quoting Lord Elton as saying “that something essentially precious is passing away from us—family life,” Miss Bennet declared that only a thin line stood between the militant forces of evil with their attendant rottenness and decay and the sacred virtues on which the nation’s life -was built. That thin line consisted of the family life reinforced and aided only by the voluntary efforts of the churches and such welfare organisations as the Y7W.C.A. Miss Bennet drew r with frank and unvarnished bluntness a grim picture of the conditions existing in tho cities of New Zealand where child delinquency was assuming frightening proportions. Not only in New Zealand wero these jjroblems being met, but England, America and Australia were battling with them and the growing apprehension evidenced in all these countries was a measure of the increasing danger of a complete moral collapse. Child delinquency and tho alarming increase in the breaking of the marriage vows were being frequently indicted in Britain; America had already instituted the curfew' for girls in 500 cities; and men and women of all shades of political opinion in hardboiled Australia were publicly voicing their alarm at (lie evils rampant in their cities and towns. Miss Bennet briefly sketched tho aims and objects of the campaign to raise funds lor establishing a small hostel in Palmerston North for the use of women of the forces as well as young women in civil life, and made an earnest appeal to the citizens of Palmerston North to give their enthusiastic support to this urgently needed institution.