Are You a Good Citizen?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 505, 25 February 1949, Page 7

Are You a Good Citizen?

F the boy is father to the man, the home is in many respects the maker of society. It is the quality of life there that carries over into the making of good citizens in the wider unit outside, or as M. H. Holcroft expresses it in a new series of talks just beginning at 4YZ, the relationship between parents and children is fundamentally "a blend of authority and co-operation." A good citizen is of course a good neighbour. If critics, Mr. Holcroft goes on, have discovered gaps and weaknesses in our way of life in New Zealand, they have not yet said that we are unsociable. In his second talk he explains why. People, he argues, have to- be sociable if they live in small and isolated communities, or their lives are very miserable. Although our "Colonial" days are over, the extent to which we had to co-operate once is still a factor in our relations with one another. But that brings Mr. Holcroft to his third point-the need for a public conscience. Go to public meetings, he says, and you tend to see the same faces. A few people are doing what all should be doing, and it is no answer for the others to say that they are not interested in politics. "The common good

still demands tribute from all who share the services and benefits of societyand society is not an abstraction." It is the people over the fence and in the street-the people there and our contacts with them. And when he gets us as far as that, Mr. Holcroft does not let us go until he has analysed the whole problem of responsibility as it affects individuals and societies, not only at home, but in international affairs as well. The first talk will be heard from Station 4YZ Invercargill this Sunday, February 27, at 2.45 p.m.