SUNDAY AT HOME

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 29, 29 October 1934, Page 6

SUNDAY AT HOME

After German Children’s Busy Week German children henceforth are to belong to their families on Sundays, to the Hitler Youth movement, and the State on Saturdays, and to the school on the remaining five days of the week. This announcement has been made by Herr Rust, the new Reich Minister for Education. His decision should go a long way toward settling disputes among tbo schools, the Hitler Youth, the family, and the churches over the weekly time-table, states a Berlin correspondent. Not long after Herr Rust’s appoint; ment as head of the new Department, an inconspicuous administrative order defined the functions of the Reich Ministry of the Interior, which formerly exercised only a certain supervision over the now disappearing regional Education Departments, and of the new Reich Educational Ministry. The Ministry of the Interior retained church affairs, but Herr Rust was entrusted not only wit>h all matters appertaining to instruction and education in the wider sense but also specifically with Youth organisations. The new arrangement) is described by the Hitler Youth movement, which professes itself- satisfied, as the result of negotiations with Herr Baldur von . Schirach, the Reich Youth Leader. The granting of Saturday as “State Youth Day” is apparently welcomed as a privilege. At the same time, the plan bears the mark of Herr Rust’s extension of authority, and while giving the Hitler Youth a whole day a week, limits its heavy demands on the children’s time. Herr Rust, who openly referred to the conflicts over the time-table, argues simply that the home and the school form the child. But the movement has to see that the coming generations are equipped mentally and physically to carry on the great tasks of the revolution. “One only becomes a National Socialist in the camp and the marching column.” There is no mention of religion or the churches, but the family is presumably at liberty to let the children devote a part of Sunday to them, and the five days devoted to the school may well provide time for such activities of the church organisations as are recognised to be a part of general education Herr Bust’s plan, although its practicability has'yet to be tested, may be taken perhaps as an example of the way in which changes gradually Come to pass in National Socialist Germany and exaggerations due to revolutionary zeal may get corrected in the course of time