OUR YOUNG INTELLIGENSIA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18036, 13 March 1933, Page 2

OUR YOUNG INTELLIGENSIA

(To the Editor of the Herald.)

Sir, —Your correspondent completely misunderstands our original letter arid the League. He says'that our basic affirmation appears to be that no change is desirable. That is not true, for we have never said anything to warrant shell a charge. Ho also asks us to publish our names so that he can publish his. \Vo have a membership from all over New Zealand running well into four figures, so his request is impossible to comply with. It is a pity that your correspondent should, question the League’s honesty of purpose and use, discourteous language to back up his points. To say that our “smooth and oily vaporirigs" imply that “right will not prevail” is totally unwarranted by anything we have written. o ! ur motives are quite simple, arid that is to try to correct the fallacious doctrines which are so prevalent in times like these arid which are put forward by people who are either ignorant of facts or are deliberately trying to mislead the public. “Our letter is said to be a “covert condemnation of the intelligence of our youth.” It is nothing of the kind ;it is a warning to some of the students at bur universities against the deliberate propaganda of a power which, openly asserts that its objective is to destroy, our Empire and the whole social and political system. Wo admit, and have always done so, that radical changes are called for, but we believe in the improvement of tlie existing system, rather than to utterly destroy it before rebuilding. This opinion may hi) honestly open to argument without such discourteous phrases as “oily VaporingS.” Rudeness is no argument. But what wo fail to understand, and shall always oppose, is reforms that must involve disloyalty to one’s country and flag, weakening of the family; destruction of religion and complete abolition of private initiative. These are. tlie very things which are being attacked by the, subversive ideas pumped into our students of both sexes by certain teachers at our educational institutions. We are voicing a very large volume of opinion that is is not right for certain teachers to draw their salaries from the State and use their positions to undermino all that the State and modern civilisation is based on. Yet that is exactly what is going on. If your correspondent, ‘•Thirty next September” was old enough to have a daughter of, say, 1820, and if he heard that daughter express views on the institution of marriage which are too revolting to put, ih print, and if ho found that these Views Were the result of six months at one of our university eolleges, ho would perhaps agree that we liad some ground for bur warning.

B be had .a son who after a similar period became impregnated with a hatred of the Empire, of the Union Jack, of all kinds of religion, and. believed that the Soviet Government of Russia was the only possible solution Jot; tlie. future ,bf tlie world, would ho liotT feel that tlie lad had been misled by dangerous teaching?

let this is what has been the exp'erienee of hundreds of parents during the last few, years, and is the direct result of tlie Third International propaganda fostered by some of our teachers in both schools and university colleges. It is no secret because the subversion of our youth, in the direction indicated above,, is openly and blatantly put forward by the Third International as. part of Its objective. Let us have our Fitts, Lincolns and Washingtons by all means, and if tlie League could find one it would throw up its hundreds of hats with your correspondent; but it is not the way to breed such young saviours to allow them to ho poisoned against all the high ideals that our Fitts, Lincolns arid Washingtons belli sacred.

We must apologise for the umliie length of this letter, but the matter is of vital importance, and “Thirty next 'September'' has utterly misunderstood our motive for the warning and the seriousness of the evil. We have not Exaggerated the position, but have stated cold facts.—We are, yours, etc., N.Z. WELFARE LEAGUE.