TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays FRIDAY, 13th SEPTEMBER, 1946 A NEW AWAKENING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 73, Issue 6281, 13 September 1946, Page 4

TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays FRIDAY, 13th SEPTEMBER, 1946 A NEW AWAKENING

FEW, IF ANY, PEOPLE will remain ■Trimoved by the appeal for an awakening interest in public affairs as put -forward by the president of the local Chamber of Commerce last Tuesday. Though addressed in this instance to th2 business community; there is a general application in this call and claim for community service which Cannot fail in either appeal or meaning. Generally there has developed a carelessness or casualness which is not difficult to understand. In the recent years the habit developed fof an ordered direction; it was largely the product of the war years that controls and similar devices should be instituted. The effect was varying degrees of compliance grumbling, perhaps, with grudging obedience. But the habit developed for people to expect others to direct them. Along with this was the governmental system, noticeable even before the war, which cultivated the idea that the citizen could lean heavily upon the State for benefits or bounties. In the process self-reiiance and self-respect were to be discounted, the individual responsibility supposedly being embodied in the community scheme. Thus it happened that all too many people became careless, assuming that they could drift casually along and that all would be well. But today there must surely be a return to a better appreciation of the individual duty and the part that each citizen must accept if a continuance of advantages already gained is to be enjoyed. Many leaders have stressed the fact that it is only by their own efforts that people may hold intact the economic structure as it is, and emphasis is given to the pressing point that unstinted effort‘is required i* progress is to continue. This, true of the national economy, has equal application in the local or domestic sphere, and so it happens that a revival of effort is enlisted. The index of the public needs and the

means for ready examination of projects call into play the best elements of organisation. Carried to its prdper conclusion, there would be the Chamber of Commerce and allied organisations in the town and the Farmers’ Federation in the country. By collaboration and the sifting of opinions, by the setting of objectives which result from discussions, and by systems of collective effort, headway can be designed and made. In the past the Chamber of Commerce has held open the means for individual voluntary helpfulness, and if there has been any shortcoming it traces to the failure of the individual to use the means that were at his disposal. But to-day there is a new approach and a more appreciated desire on' the part of the individual to discharge the responsibilities. Nothing could be more welcome than this new appreciation, for it is true that any organisation can be only as strong as its members make it. If, therefore, signs of strength are to be made evident in the future, there must be, firstly, the overthrow of the foolish belief that sole reliance can be placed on systems of State provision, leading, in turn, to the free and ready acceptance of those public responsibilities which have their final discharge in individual action. The speed and measure of accomplishment depend on the extent and the nature of the individual contributor—that, of all else, is the quality now needed. Courage and ingenuity, diligence and resolute endeavour—these are the qualities which each and every citizen must offer at this time.