CIVIC AFFAIRS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3912, 5 March 1929, Page 73

CIVIC AFFAIRS.

PUBLIC APATHY DEPLORED.

AUCKLAND, February 25.

Public apathy in civic affairs was deplored by Mr AV. J. Holdsworth, chairman of the Auckland Power Board, in addressing the Rotary Club on the occasion of the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Rotary movement. In a speech that emphasised the practical applications of citizenship the speaker expressed the view that sport and recreation, while having their rightful place in the community, had no right to dominate the interests of the people to the exclusion of everything else. The scholar, Sir Ernest Rutherford, would survive in history the boxer, Tom Heeney. “ Signs are not wanting that unless the people throw off their apathy and indifference and take a live interest in civic matters the future is fraught ■with trouble,” said Mr Holdsworth. “In every walk of life men are striving and making a supreme sacrifice to add to the sum of human knowledge; yet in national and local politics we, as a community, are marking time, and this mainly through lack of interest on the part of the people. It has been rightly said that individual responsibility for the good government of the country ought to be learned at every mother’s knee, taught daily in the schools, preached continually from the pulpit and proclaimed everywhere by the press. There is not the slightest doubt we are living in a pleasure-loving age. Recreation and sport have their rightful place in our life and in the community, but they have no right to dominate and take first place to the exclusion of everything else.” People seemed, in fact, to be in danger of losing their sense of proportion, said the speaker. The defeat of the All Blacks and the failure of Tom Heeney were regarded in the light of national calamities, but he ventured to say that when Heeney was forgotten the name of Sir Ernest Rutherford, who had placed New Zealand on the map of science, would live in the annals of her history. It was a lamentable fact that while prize fighters wer<jj receiving purses running into five figures, two young English doctors devoting their lives to cancer research committed suicide because they could not face poverty.