The Daily News. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1920. NATIONAL ORGANISATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 February 1920, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1920. NATIONAL ORGANISATION.

Professor Hugh Mackenzie has recently delivered a remarkable address on "The; Tasks of Our Statesmen and Educators," and therein he touched on most of the matters that are vital to national welfare. He asserted, with all the emphasis at his command, that until our statesmen come to realise, and duly appreciate the fact that the home-makers and family raisers of the Dominion are its backbone, the mothers its greatest benefactresses, and children its greatest aad grandest asset, they will find themselves

confronted, not only with potential, but also with active, if not militant, Bolshevism. A nation is what the people make it, and according to how the people are educated and organised so will that nation rise to a high plane or become decadent. The professor made some drastic comments on the evil of race suicide, adding that our politicians and statesmen should clothe themselves for the rest of their days in sackcloth and ashes when they calmly and seriously consider that their political activities are steadily and increasingly from year to year imposing heavier and more intolerable burdens on home-mak-ers and family raisers. He eontends that in an educated and enlightened community such as ours is, possessing a country with almost inexhaustible resources, it should be perfectly possible, under the direction of competent statesmanship, to bring about such social and economic conditions that all young men reasonably equipped for their work and duties would be in a position to marry and maintain a family between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. Unfortunately, there are, he points out, many social and economic handicaps calling for serious consideration, one of these being the inadequate equipment for work of large numbers of both sexes engaged in our industries. Education has done much to remedy this drawback, and technical and continuation classes are doing more in this direction. It is to the perfecting of our education system that we must look for drastic changes in economic and industrial life, coupled with the institution of such conditions as 5 will improve the lot of the workers, morally, socially and physically. This view is supported by the following extract from the report of the Departmental Committee on Juvenile Education in relation to employment after the war:—

Any inquiry into education at the present juncture is big with issues of national life. In the great work of reconstruction which lies ahead there are aims to be set. before us which will try no less searchingly than the war itself the temper and enduring qualities of the race, and in the realisation if each and all of these education, with its stimulus and self-discipline, must be our stand-by. We have to perfect the civilisation for which our men have shed their blood and our women their tears, to establish new standards of value in our judgment of what makes life worth living, more wholesome and more restrained ideals of behaviour and recreation, finer traditions of co-operation and kindly fellowship between class and class and man and man.

This, states Professor Mackenzie, should surely actuate our statesmen, our educationalists, our moralists and our religious teachers in the momentous, important, and responsible task of devising means for making democracy safe for the world, as well as the world a happy habitat for democracy. Education alone can equip the people for efficient citizenship, while statesmanship alon.e can organise the community for effective economic production. National organisation is our great need, not only in the educational system, but in the imperative necessity for greater production as the outcome of improved intelligence and efficiency. Industry needs organising in order to obtain the maximum output, and to stem the drift of the country people town wards, which is directly or indirectly responsible for much evil and exploitation. , The land is the chief, source of all material wealth, and the more wealth won from the land, the greater will be the prosperity of the country and the contentedness of the people. To obtain the full fruits from our natural resources there must be secondary industries, and in the development of. these statesmanship must take a hand. There is no doubt that with our education system expanded on broad, practical lines, and organisation placed on a sound basis, the- future of the Dominion would be one of illimitable expansion and unparalleled progress and prosperity. The day of social justice and political square deals cannot be reached until the systematic organisation of the community has become an accomplished fact. No fruitful organisation can take place until the causes of industrial, unrest and discontent are removed, not by temporary.expedients and reluctant concessions, but by remedial measures that strike at the root of the troubles, and by the institution of heavy penalties for promoting disaffection.