THE COMMUNITY SPIRIT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 72, Issue 293, 10 December 1929, Page 10

THE COMMUNITY SPIRIT

SHORTCOMINGS POINTED OUT. FAULT OF SELF-SATISFACTION An appeal for some hard thinking as he put forward certain ways in which, as a community, New Zealand was rather failing, was marked by Archdeacon Creed Meredith in an address delivered at the Rotary Club’s weektly luncheon yesterday. If, said the Archdeacon, they were able to see the reasons for failure, they were on the right lines to effect an improvement. To commence with, however, there were two good points in regard to New Zealand. Oddly enough the things which a country, like an individual, was proud of, were generally the things concerning which*it was doubtful whether the country could hold its own with other countries, and the things about which it was doubtful were fit subjects for pride. Two good points of New Zealand’s were its railways and its roads. People laughed at the mention of these, and consequently the the country was reaching a standard extraordinarily critical. It was surprising that with the sparse population of th e Dominion it should hav© su-ch roads and railways as it had. Selfishness. <‘ If we had been satisfied and thought the roads and railways good, we would not have worried about them,” continued the speaker. “There are other points about which we have been slack, because we have been satisfied with them. There is one fault which all Rotarians will deplore as evidenced in th e community life of this town, and 1 think it is the fault of selfishness. There are two ways in which to view the matter. One is the Rotarian motto of doing the best for the community and the other way of making the community do its best for us. I am afraid there are many living to make the community do it s best for them. They pay for social service to be done, rather than do social service themselves. There is a loss of joy ofservice, and I think the reason of it is that, in the early life of the pioneers in this country, each man was busily occupied in fighting things out in his corner. No man had time to do certain little community jobs. “The second thing I am going to say is this. I think there’s a good deal of inefficiency amongst Wanganui business men. ’ ’ The Archdeacon went on to explain that he was quoted £6O for a job in Wanganui, and for the same work in another town he was quoted £32 10s. Another job was quoted at £lB here and £l2 in another town. He thought it was true to say that there were business men content with out-of-dat e methods and plant. There was a good deal of selfishness and there was not the ideal of business as was in the minds of the men who built up great businesses in the past. If men were spending right up to t-h e hilt, they were not able to put back into business money which would make it efficient, H e thought that the same criticism applied to what was known as the professional group. This group was asking: ‘ ‘ How can I run my profession s o as to give a considerable amount of leisur e time for myself?” If the professional classes W'ere demanding more and more leisure, it was going to take more to get the work done, and th© country would suffer economically. It came to this, that every man had to mak© up his mind to do his work as well as he possibly could. Superfluity of Amateur Critics, Thirdly, continued the speaker, there seemed to be a very great danger from a superfluity of critics in almost every direction. (Hear, hear). He had been five years in Wanganui, and practically at no time during that time had. there been a period of more than a few months when one of the civic officials was not being pilloried becaus e of what some person though as to the way his job should be done. Civic bodies could not get the best out of their servants unless the latter had reason to believe that they would be looked upon as experts and allowed to do their work without the amateur critics spoiling it. Let us try to see that the old system of every man knowing a little about everything -was not particularly successful, and let u s b e specialists. In conclusion, the speaker issued : warning note against underground in fluences in civic matters. It was desk abl e that there should be a return t. the absolute standard of putting pc.i sonal likes and interests on one side in matters for the well-being of th© com munity. At the conclusion of his remarks the speaker was accorded a vote of thanks, which was carried with acclamatnon.