EMPIRE SPIRIT NEEDED

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20721, 3 February 1939, Page 9

EMPIRE SPIRIT NEEDED

HON. J. A. HANAN’S VIEW RHODES SCHOLARS AS LEADERS A YOUTH MOVEMENT? (Special to Times.) CHRISTCHURCH, Wednesday. “ The development of an Empire spirit and the whole initiative and shaping of means to defend ourselves and our cherished heritages should not be left entirely to a government and a few public-spirited bodies,” said the Hon. J. A. Hanan, M.L.C., Chancellor of the Senate of the New Zealand University at a meeting held at Christchurch yesterday. “ Why have we not a youth movement to that end, such as they have in Germany? Increased leisure now furnishes the opportunity for such an enterprise to thrive.

“Ms leaders might well be found among the young students whom we yearly send to Oxford to widen their mental horizon. Bv tlie very qualities for which our Rhodes Scholars are chosen, they should come back to us true citizens of the Empire ready for leadership of our young manhood. The menace that would change us at a stroke from freemen to helots of a foreign despotism has proved its character and its purposes too widely and too terribly to be ignored. Leadership which evidences itself in the university campus, when it is combined with outstanding physical and mental endowments, should readily find its sphere in these critical days in a fearridden world. “It was intended,” continued Mr Hanan, “ that Rhodes Scholars should become missionaries of the true Empire Spirit, should promote a better knowledge and understanding of the rights, benefits and privileges of British citizenship, as well as of the duties, burdens and responsibility which these Involve. The call is upon them to fulfil their high mission, to stir us from our strange lethargy, our false sense of easy security aftti to guide us in the path of enlightened self-interest.

“ In peaceful and prosperous times we are very apt to look through a lens of short focus, thereby failing to perceive that our freedom, the wealth and greatness of our Empire, cannot last one day longer than the strenuous efforts and other splendid features of character which created them.

“ The fact that there is widespread moral unrest, and that moral and spiritual progress has lagged behind material progress, gives some evidence of the existence of the same degenerating tendencies and dangerous forces that were responsible for the decline and fall of ancient empires. It is well for us to remember that If we are to avoid the fate of those ancient people, we must shun the evils that led to their, downfall.’’