FRENCH PROBLEMS

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 269, 13 November 1935, Page 17

FRENCH PROBLEMS

REBELLIOUS YOUTH.

STERN PARENTAL CONTROL.

AGE HOLDS THE REINS. (By A Special Correspondent.) BOSTON, October 8. A French woman was speaking. "Our problem of the family is hist opposite from yours," saicl Mile. Therese Bieillot. "We have to say to parents of juvenile offenders, 'You must let this boy go out in the evening or something worse will happen.' "Our family life is almost too close. There are good and also bad points to a close family life. Our French families go to the country together on a Sunday, and return all together in the evening. The son ,cr daughter does not think of go ; .ng alone; The father has a patriarchal authority. "Now our yfeutli are straining at these tight ties. Much of our work in connection with juvenile court cases is explaining to parents that they must give the child's individuality a chance. "A great trouble with France to-day is that our young people are held in leash by the older men. We have in France a youth movement that is liberal and generous spirited, so vitally different from the Nazi youth who follow Hitler, and the Fascist youth of Mussolini. "But our youth and their fine spirit are repressed by the elders. Our leaders are old men. Too old. When I see your young senators I see the youth and strength of your young country. Outyoung people are held down, and the men who govern us are 05 and 70. "That is one reason-that we have'not yet won the vote for women in France. Suffrage has several times passed the Chamber of Deputies, but the senate always votes it down. The legal minimum age for Senators is 55, aiid Senators hardly ever die. Lost Elite in War. "In such times when things have changed so completely in less than a generation, youth should be given a chance. I see our young men of 30, ardent for change and eager to take hold and do something. They aren't given a chance. "Then, you sse in France we lost our elite in the war. In this we are like Germany, only more so. The Germans kept their scientific and best educated men out of the war. Our ideology is different in France. Very many of our finest men, even over 50, volunteered for service and we let them go. "Even now, 20 years later, we feel the lack of real men. The ones who lived to become the politicians of to-day are the ones who knew how to escape the war. That explains the sordid Stavisky affair and many other wretched things in our political life. That to my mind is the worst result of the war. "One cause of our immigration problem in France is that we lost so many men in the war. Must of our men who were killed were agricultural workers. There was a lack of men to work the land, and so contracts were made with Polish men and women to work the farms. , , floods i&mlth people who can t stand Mussolini, and Hitler's opponents pour into France from Germany. Since the -Republic in has been unsafe there for many and bpanish Refugees have moVed to France. I suppose almost all the White Russians came to Paris. You see, France has been the refuge of all the peoples who have fled their own lands in the upheavals since the war. "This makes political problems and social problems, too. The Italians form colonies. Mussolini keeps his eye on them. And Hitler, too, asserts that German emigrants are still citizens of France.

U.S. Quotas Twin Tide. "In Paris we have been flooded with people of all races who started for the United States and have been backed up on us hy your quota laws. We have more Armenians and Greeks since you closed your quotas. The drives against Jews in Poland and Germany have sent so many Jews into Paris that our most ancient literary quarter is now a Yiddisli centre. "I am afraid that foreigners now find us a rtide people, lacking in the courtesy for which we were once noted. it s our nerves. So much insecurity and now so much unemployment are attesting our nervous systems. We see the effect in our juvenile court cases. Children are affected by the strain on the "Strain takes different manifestations with different races. We Latins have less self-control. We don't repress ourselves. We out with it. It is less agreeable to our neighbours than your repression of emotions. But it is safer for ourselves. I have often wondered why the English and Americans don t do more in educating for self-expression, to develop safety valves for your too great repression. American . Girl Points Way. "It took an American girl to show France the need for dealing with the iuvenile offender scientifically as you do through such agencies as your Judge Baker Child Guidance Centre. Chloe Owens, who was with a field hospital in Franco during the war, stayed to study at the Sorbonne after the war. She took for her thesis the study of juvenile delinquency in France. "In Paris my service has to dear with all the juvenile cases in the whole Department of the Seine. That is, the 20 boroughs of Paris and 85 suburbs, a population of 5,500,000. The whole emphasis of our staff of 30 social service workers is on the neglect cases of children. The older repeated offenders are handled by a separate organisation. fr."l find that it is not poverty that stages juvenile delinquency nearly so miwh as it is domestic troubles. Two- ] thirds of our children who get into Juvenile Court ■ are the children of divorced or of divided homes. I was amazed when I found this in a study of our first 1000 cases. Feeble-minded-ness is the next largest factor. But more than ever our younger generation is trying to break away from tight parental control. "We have a great deal to learn about the technique of Your organisation is so much better than ours. The French are not good at organisation. We are undisciplined individualists. That is why I think it is a crime that a tight bureaucracy of government has been fastened on to our people. That is why I i.i* -rather sorry to see' more federalisatiun in your Government. I am afraid of administrative autocracy. But doubtless with your 'talent for organsation you will keep your Government supple, and intelligent. You manage to keep the personal touch here even in your postal service." —(N.A.N.A.)