PATRIOTIC SERVICE

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 282, 23 August 1940, Page 8

PATRIOTIC SERVICE

Thousands of people in this country are giving war services of one kind and another without any thought of fee or reward. They are animated solely by the desire to do something toward the nation’s war effort. This is the right spirit. Jt is the spirit that often in the past has carried a brave and patriotic people to victory. Here and there, however, there is a tendency to commercialize war service as something from which some benefit should accrue* to a sectional interest, thus depriving the nation as a whole of the full measure of the result. On Wednesday, for Example, the Wellington Education Board decided, after discussion, to allow the school children to participate in the waste-saving campaign. This campaign has been launched in the national interest. The more waste material collected, and collected economically, the greater the measure of return for the general benefit.

This point was apparently overlooked by one member of the board who suggested that as the schools were in need of increased funds, it might be possible to credit them with half the proceeds from the sale of the material. This, as another speaker pointed out, would take the whole spirit out of the service the children were to be asked to give. That is perfectly true. This service, it should be pointed out to the children, is something they and their schools are asked to do for their country in wartime, something they should be proud to do without any idea of personal or sectional gain. An opportunity is here provided of stimulating the spirit of disinterested service, one of the highest attributes of patriotic citizenship.