NEEDS OF A YOUNG NATION

Press, Volume C, Issue 29469, 22 March 1961, Page 9

NEEDS OF A YOUNG NATION

"The Press’’ Special Service

WELLINGTON, March 20. Hopes that the new Left Bank, Chelsea and San Francisco dress styles affected by New Zealand university students meant also new ideas and bold thinking, were expressed by a geographical research writer, Mr S. H. Franklin, in the first of a series of lectures on “The New Zealand Community,” being given by the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Geographical Society. Needed was some group of writers which "would grasp this pureile nation and by delineating its course,” give New Zealand a socially illuminating literature to vie with America’s best “Main Street” tradition. “We require no profound scholarship—there is no time —we need fresh clever minds, witty imagination and the ability to interpret the social scene, to explain it, to criticise it, and to influence its course of development.” New Zealand's population now had something it had lacked for years—a population in which the young formed a considerable section, said Mr Franklin, who is a senior lecturer in geography at the Victoria University of Wellington. “In 1956 the 0-15 group (that is 5-20 today) accounted for 31.3 per cent, of the population. In the presence of these young people lies the reason for an expectation of further growth. “A society which in another decade will be one and a half times as large as it was a decade ago cannot be the same. These young people have already appeared in the halls of the university. “I find it hard to believe that some of them are New Zealanders, for by their dress they could have come from the Left Bank, or King’s road, Chelsea, or San Francisco. “I sincerely hope that their new dress means also new ideas and bold thinking. Perhaps from among them will come some political leader with guts enough to allow us to drink during hours adopted by the rest of the civilised world.” Among them, he hoped, would be a leader who would again command respect for political debate, some letter writer who would rise above the banalities of nom de plume, and sign his own name. “Some editor perhaps who will give tis a newspaper that isn’t an affront to one’s intellectual sensibilities, some commentator who is prepared to state his view

trenchantly on a broadcasting service which can be considered independent, some schoolteacher who will bring back to the service the professional distinction it once had,” he said. From these youngsters would arise, he hoped, “some manufacturer who will be interested in quality and service, some group of young men who will make such magazines as ‘Comment’ and ‘Monthly Review’ and ‘Landfall’ appear as an integral part of society rather than a sect, desperately hanging on.”