DANGER TO SOCIETY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 926, 22 November 1933, Page 5

DANGER TO SOCIETY.

The Neglect of Young People. MORAL RESPONSIBILITY. (Special to the “ Star.”) LONDON, October 20. “ Neglect of boys or girls is a great danger to society,” said Mr Ramsay MacDonald at a gathering organised by the National Association of Boys’ Clubs. “ The better the qualities of boys and girls, the greater is the danger of neglecting them,” he added. “ The tendency in these days is to widen the field of communal responsibility till public organisation supplants individual moral responsibility. It is quite unnecessary for me to remind you that as far as the organisation of communal responsibility is concerned, I am all for it. You cannot avoid it. Reason applied to the organisation of social activity is likely to lead Britain and all other countries through the next stage of their social evolution. But never in days gone by, and never, I believe, in the days to come, whether they may be long or short, will any organisation of communal responsibility make it unnecessary for you to exercise to the very fullest extent your personal responsibility to your fellow human beings, particularly to the youth of the country. The more' highly organised we make social responsibility the wider and wider ought to become the field in which the individual man can find free play for the exercise of his moral responsibility, not as .a duty, but as a natural and spontaneous exercise of his own personality.”