TO ALL CITIZENS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 September 1943, Page 3

TO ALL CITIZENS

WHERE THERE IS NO VISION THE PEOPLE PERISH.

If a man is climbing a mountain, he must have some form of road mark, else he often just simply gets nowhere. In pleasant weather the journey and scenery may be pleasant, but what of the darkness and that ever threatening storm? A person in a crowd, unless he has a definite aim to reach somewhere, just becomes lost in that crowd, never reaching anywhere, always the centre of a mass of people with no knowledge of his existence, himself merely content to drift wherever the mass would cast him. Just the same, the mariner without a compass, attempting to pilot a ship through strange waters, can expect only disaster. The success of the R.A.F. and the Allied Forces in the Battle of Britain, and also in the Middle East, can be attributed mainly to the carefully laid plans, the navigation, and the execution of those plans by physically and mentally sound men of the fighting forces. The training given to our men is the real factor, or signpost, which leads to Victory. The greatest factor in the human existence today is not Economic Structure, Political Systems. Machinery, or Creeds and ’lsms, but God created man. An individual with the power of reason, the will to live a clean, healthy life. You have just, by democratic method, entrusted the National affairs of this country to that same being, Man. Remember the Youth of today are the citizens and leaders of the future, and the outlook we encourage will have a direct influence on the future of our country and the whole world. The Y.M.C.A. is playing a large part in making these men and women healthy in body, clean in actions, sound in judgment, all necessary in good citizenship. The Y.M.C.A. is an International and Inter-denominational Movement, which has proved itself a Civic Necessity. The future belongs to Youth. Train them for it. —P.B.A.