NEW EPOCH FOR YOUTH

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume 65, Issue 99, 17 December 1943, Page 3

NEW EPOCH FOR YOUTH

THE WORLD AFTER THE

WAR

GREAT RESPONSIBILITIES AND OPPORTUNITIES

"In New Zealand the tradition is to place heavy reliance on the State, While in America we rely on rugged individualism," said Professor Allan Nevins, M.A., L.L.D., in an address at the annual prize-giving of the Seddon Memorial Technical College, at Auckland." Professor Nevins, who is professor of American history al Columbia University, New York, is touring New Zealand as the special representative in the Dominion of the Office of War Information, Washington.

"Mr Herbert Morrison has denounced any rigid formulas in approaching these questions," said Professor Nevins. "Neither the slogan of all-round nationalisation nor that of all-round control is workable. What is more important than method is the spirit in which these problems are approached. It will not do to take up a defeatist attitude, or to assume that attitude of disillusionment and contemptuous disgust which marked so many young people after the last war. Reforms are hard to win and incompetence, stupidity .and greed are often more powerful than right. What is important is confidence, hope and a consciousness of the duty of active citizenship.

"Alongside its heavy responsibilities, the youth of today is faced with alluring and fascinating opportunities. We are entering a new •world of plastics, glass, synthetic fibres, electronics .and lighter metals. The production of plastics in the United States has redoubled in dollar value in recent years. Huge plastic pieces, measuring as much as 4000 square inches, roll off the assembly lines like soap bubbles. "Glass of a hundred types has been put into heavy production. Glass that can be sawn, drilled stretched or bent, glass so buoyant that it can be used for life preservers and which resists the most intense heat in searchlights and the most intense cold. We shall soon have a greater flow of rubber from the new synthetic mills than we ever had from natural sources The American programme calls for more than 1,000,000 tons of aluminium this year and more than 350,000 tons of magnesium, manufactured at a rate so cheap that they will go into a multitude of peacetime uses as soon as the war ends. "Prefabrication, mass production and the use of new tools have transformed the ancient art of shipbuilding. Pieces weighing 80 tons are swung together by giant cranes ?w t St*A nCeS 0f half a toile and they fit to a fraction of ,an inch. The organisation for the invasion of North Africa and Italy was a prodigy of elaborate training. Surely these immense advances in constructive and organising powers will later be used for progdess in the arts of peace. "New Zealand and American lads a£L ai^f ir \ that they must play their xull part m winning the peace 2_« S younS men of your generation who are the finest hope in the woria. Tou enter on J e hen^ great new epoch of human history is beginning. It is for you to do your part to see that it is a peacepnLhaPP^ and steadily brightening epoch, and one founded on the fra- &/ nf tions and on mutual trust, respect and concord."