STATE AFFAIRS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 December 1938, Page 6

STATE AFFAIRS

PREPARATION FOR LEADERSHIP. ADDRESS BY MR T. JORDAN IN WELLINGTON. The principal speaker at the prizegiving ceremony of Wellington College, which took place last night, was Mr T. Jordan, Mayor of Masterton, a former dux of the college and a former master. Mrs Jordan presented the prizes.

Mr Jordan devoted the main part of his address to the necessity for young men to prepare themselves for leadership in the affairs of the State. Everything today seemed to be in a state of chaos, he said, but he believed that from it a new order would be evolved. What it turned out to be depended largely on the boys now at school. He urged upon them the need for taking an interest, in government. There was a great deal of spiritual value in the willingness of young men co devote themselves to the service of the State. If the democratic form of government was to survive, that willingness would have to be regarded as a normal state of mind. That any sort of stigma should attach to politicians, and even the stigma of dishonesty sometimes did, was a strange commentary on the times. He meant by government that wide field which ncluded every influence on the life of the individual. It was therefore essential that the individual should know what was going on around him. The State had a right to some return for .he education it provided. The older men were handing on their heritage, their honour, and all their hopes for the future. The boys must put their duty first and think of their . rights afterward. The leadership required by the democratic form of government was that of faith and character. With the boys lay the leadership of the future. There was, he knew, a good deal wrong with the civilisation of the day, yet they must be careful riot to throw away the gains hardly won. They must receive the light, as their school motto said, and point the way to the wandering people of the Dominion.