PROBLEMS OF THE EAST

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28836, 5 March 1959, Page 2

PROBLEMS OF THE EAST

Miss M. McLean’s Views

Four trips overseas had drastically altered her opinions about the East and what the Western world could do to help there, Miss Mary McLean told members of the Canterbury Housewives’ Union which met last evening for their annual international evening. The chairman was Mrs A. Remalt and the organisers Mesdames M. E. Furey and J. Ryan. She had realised that the Eastern .civilisations were so much older, and that the modern Western peoples had not to contend in the same way with starvation ill-health and menacing neighbours. Miss McLean said. Quoting Eastern women she met at international conferences, Miss McLean said that a basic technical education was needed and not the academic and materialistic education which was helping to kill the spiritual side of Ute there.

“After the war," she said, “the United States Government built universities in the Philippines, and in one year, one which I looked over turned out 1000 lawyers. They were in a country where there is little quarrelling, and 200 of them found work as juniors in legal offices; 50 drove jeeps, and the rest took to the hills, divorced from Church and home.’’ Challenged Miss McLean was challenged by two or three members of the audience among them Mr P. J. Alley, who said that the greatest problem was not too little, but too much religion. Backwardness in the use of machinery was the reason for poverty, he said. “But you cannot take a people who have been planting rice in the field with their fingers, and in two years put them in universities,” Miss McLean said. Then, surrounded by colourful posters from many nations, and carved figures, lacquered bowls and similar craft work, the housewives provided supper with many of the dishes from other countries.