EMPIRE YOUTH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26544, 20 August 1947, Page 6

EMPIRE YOUTH

FOUNDER OF MOVEMENT MAJOR NEY TO VISIT DUNEDIN Major F. J. Ney, president of the Canadian Council of Education, and founder of tile Empire Youth Movement, will arrive in Dunedin either to-day or to-mor-row. He has expressed the wish to meet persons representing youth organisations and church leaders. After a recent trip in which he travelled over 50,000 miles throughout Africa, among the islands of the Indian Ocean and through the Middle East and in Europe, Major Ney insisted that the problems of the present post-war period could be solved, only by spiritual means, without which economic planning would inevitably suffer from the disease of materialism which was rotting away the very roots of Christian civilisation. In a memorandum issued on behalf oi the National Council of Education in 1043, Major Ney said that of the nine original proposals for the Empire Youth Movement, Youth Sunday was intended as its very foundation. Youth Sunday had been established and it now remained to be sefln what further progress could be made with the movement as a whole. At least it could be claimed, with good reason, that since the initial gatherings in 1937, the need for the organisation of youth on a large and comprehensive Scale had received increasing recognition. Major Ney realised that several obvious difficulties bad to be overcome. Outstanding among these was the reluctance of existing youth organisations to collaborate. On the readiness of all to sublimate some part of their individualism to the common good, the success of the larger scheme depended.