RIGHTS OF YOUTHS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 25 October 1924, Page 6

RIGHTS OF YOUTHS.

STUDENTS CRITICISE CHURCH. “RUN BY MIDDLE-AGED FOR MIDDLE-AGED.’i A vigorous controversy is proceeding between spokesmen of the Churches and university students regarding whether the people should be allowed to live their own lives in their own way. Lady Martin Harvey, formerly Miss N. de Silva, a well-known actress, addressing the citizens’ union, said that nowadays everything which neither dealt with the sex question nor was risky was called highbrow. She saw a girl of 15 drinking cocktails and smoking cigarettes in an hotel lounge. “What are the mothers thinking about ?” she asked. “Girls speak a jargon about living their own lives. They will not be bettered. They consider their parents old-fashioned.” The grant increase' of alcoholic abuse among undergraduates, and deprecates the spread of the cocktail habit. The Bishop of Woolwich, speaking at the Oxford Church Congress, hotly attacked birth control as a degradation of the sacrament of marriage, fraught with great physical and moral dangers and clearly opposed to Christian conduct. Undergraduates of both sexes, in rebutting the case at to-day’s-Congress, frankly criticised the differences of the Church in ministering to the requirements of youth. Stephen Neill said: “We are deeply and darkly suspicious 'that the Church is being run by the middle-aged for the benefit of the middle-aged. What are we to do if we find a congregation of Christians, a hotbed of jealousy, backbiting, malice? If a churchwarden’s wife meets another on a committee and cuts her in the street? If professing Christians gamble on the Stock Exchange, underpay thei r employees and draw revenues from slums ? ( Miss Highle.v, an undergraduate at Somerville College, said she did not think the Church would compete with the cinemas for mild entertainment. The Rev. M. Roliss quoted a case of a l>oy whose Sunday School teacher ta>ld him that if he behaved badly ho would not go to heaven. The lad replied : “Well. I’m going to Brighton next week. I can’t expect to go everywhere.” He advocated giving much greater freedom and independence. The Rev. Mr. Pyn, speaking in regard to birth control, considered that the Church, should give more detailed instruction about Christian marriage.