PROBLEMS OF YOUTH.

HL Deb 17 February 1943 vol 126 cc55-102

LORD SOUTHWOOD rose to call attention to problems relating to youth in this country; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name. A little more than two years ago, this nation was saved from almost irreparable disaster by a tiny band of young men. In the great air conflict of the autumn of 1940, our entire destiny rested on the efforts of a mere handful of young fighter pilots. If they had failed us in resource, in skill, in courage and in the spirit of self-sacrifice in the face of a powerful and relentless foe, it is terrible to realize that this country would in all probability have been face to face with defeat. I do not think that there can be any doubt that the accomplishment of that youthful band turned the whole course of the war to our advantage and to our salvation. They did not fail us. Their heroism brought a resounding triumph, and the story of that triumph will live for all time in the most glorious pages of the history of this country.

I recall this to-day for one purpose and for one purpose only, and that is to support and justify my claim that the youth of this country deserve from the State, from the Government and from Parliament, the finest provision for their future that it is in our power to make. That is the basis of the observations which I desire to place before your Lordships this afternoon. My Motion is concerned, of course, with the generation just below that to which the members of the Fighting Forces belong; it is concerned with the period of adolescence, that very important period of life when youth emerges from childhood into the full status of manhood and womanhood. War makes us realize that we pass from childhood to manhood very quickly. I have only to remind you that the boy of thirteen or fourteen years of age, still at school when this war began, will be called up for medical examination and for service in the Fighting Forces some time during this very year. That in itself surely suggests that we should not take too narrow a view when considering the problems associated with youth.

I know that your Lordships will be the very first to admit that this country cannot afford to sit back and rest after we and our Allies have finally won this war, as win it of course we shall. We must then face vast problems of reconstruction, problems which will require an all-out effort for many a long year to come. We shall need our young men and our young women in that effort; we must look to them, after the exacting years of the war, to provide much of the zeal, the inspiration and the initiative which we shall most surely require. We shall need the questing spirit of youth in industry, in commerce, in politics, in government, and in both national and local administration. That, as I see it, is the main reason why we should apply ourselves with the greatest care to the task of giving our youth the fullest opportunities of self-expression and self-development. I think that the interests of the nation demand it. Let us see what we can make of them, not what we can make out of them.

What can we do? Vague, undirected interest is, of course, not enough. We need ideas, plans, proposals, decisions and, above all, a clear conception of what youth really requires. What can we do? In the first place, let us dismiss once and for all the idea that youth requires elaborate organization imposed upon it from outside. In everything we do I think that the dangers both of compulsion and of coddling should be avoided. The whole art of handling youth rests in encouraging them to develop themselves; but, of course, there must be conscious and considered attention by the community to all the facilities which will permit young people to make the most of themselves. That, indeed, is the basis of my case. What is the first provision that we must make for youth? On that I do not think there can be any doubt whatever: we must provide them with security of work. We must see that they have jobs at proper rates of pay; we must see that their work is congenial, and we must see that they have the opportunities to advance themselves in industry. I think that this central problem must be tackled. I realize, of course, that it is part of the much wider problem of organizing industry. We must as far as possible avoid unemployment in any section of our community. But I feel that unemployment among young people is more deadly and more soul-destroying than it is even among the older generation.

Let me give your Lordships a few figures about juvenile unemployment. I do not want to weary you with dry statistics, but I have been looking at the issues of the Ministry of Labour Gazette for the year 1935. I took that year because that was an ordinary peace-time year, when conditions had begun to be what was known as normal. In August of that year, there were 57,000 children of the ages of fourteen and fifteen officially registered as unemployed. There was a large number unemployed but not so registered, because a good many parents do not bother to send their children to the labour exchange to be registered at so young an age. No less than 30 per cent. of the boys and 41 per cent. of the girls so registered had had no employment since leaving school. That was a normal thing in an ordinary peace-time year; in periods of depression, of course, the position was very much worse. What about boys and girls from sixteen to seventeen? The total number registered as unemployed in the sample month I have taken was no less than 44,637. So here we have altogether 100,000 boys and girls between the ages of fourteen and seventeen actually registered as unemployed, apart from those who were in fact unemployed but were not so registered. I could give you figures for the later age groups, but I think I have said enough for my purpose. I am convinced that we must never again allow this sort of thing to happen. Not only is it a great waste of our resources but it raises great human problems. To be thrown on the industrial scrap-heap in those early impressionable years is highly damaging to the whole character and outlook of young people.

This question of unemployment brings one a step further to the question of education. I believe that the younger people at least ought never to go on the labour market at all. The raising of the school-leaving age I regard as an urgent necessity. I think it ought to go up to at least sixteen. Sixteen surely is the lowest age at which we should take young people away from school. Of course I can easily make a case for raising the age to eighteen, and I believe some day it will be that, but I should be content if we could feel that within a reasonable time the school-leaving age was going to be raised to sixteen. I wonder if we may hope that the new Education Bill, which I believe is to come before us very shortly, will take us along towards that goal. By raising the school-leaving age we accomplish two things. We of course help to reduce the total number of unemployed, but that is not so important. More important is that we shall be giving our young people what I call a far better start in life. Of course education calls for even wider reforms than the raising of the school-leaving age; indeed, I personally think that the whole system of schooling requires a drastic overhaul. We need more schools, we need better schools, and we need schools more adequately staffed and equipped. These needs have to be met if our children are to be given what we might call a fair chance in life.

On this matter may I be permitted to quote just one or two more figures? I have again selected the year 1935 which was a typical pre-war year. In that year there were no fewer than 49,877 classes—that is, practically 50,000 classes—in our elementary schools with over forty scholars in each class. As a matter of fact there were 4,218 with over fifty scholars in each class. What does that mean? That means obviously that there were at that date over 2,200,000 children in this country getting inedaquate facilities for education.

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

It is a question of teachers.

LORD SOUTHWOOD

I will come to the teachers in a moment. Anyway, I am sure it will be agreed that it is quite impossible to impart individual and proper education to young people in classes of that size. Then again, many schools black-listed as unfit for use have yet gone on being used right up to the present time. At the beginning of 1935 there were no fewer than 1,102 con- demned schools in daily use. And remember that was in 1935—seventeen years after the end of the last war, and before we began even the preparation for the present war. So I think it will be very difficult to find a good and sufficient reason why these condemned schools should have been kept in use.

Of course you may ask what has all this got to do with the question of adolescence. My answer is, a very great deal. The typo of young man and young woman we turn out depends, to a large extent, on the schooling they receive. Obviously you cannot build well for the future if the foundations are wrong. I submit that one of the most urgent of our problems is the provision of much better schooling facilities for, every child. Here again we can look with some hope to the new Education Bill. But for the adolescents much more is needed. When the child has passed fourteen its education, in my view, should enter an entirely new phase. It should be trained for the work it will do in after life; it should be prepared for full citizenship; it should be shown how to achieve the cultural enjoyment of life; and, last but not least, it should be educated in the proper use of leisure. These four aims are all important, but the one that requires special care is that of the preparation of a child's career. There are tens of thousands of our young children—this is what I want to emphasize—who are allowed to drift into what I may call blind-alley occupations. These dead-end jobs are heartbreaking. They are not only unfair for the child, but they waste much of the talent and ability which might be available for the nation. We must find a way of giving each young man and each young girl a real chance. In other words, we must find some way of taking down the wall at the end of the cul-de-sac which is barring their way to progress. It seems to me that it is a tragedy, a real tragedy, that those who are capable of better things should be condemned to a hopeless future—what one might call routine repetitive work, or even worse.

Then ought not we to do something to discover the special capacities of each adolescent? We must think of them as individuals, as human beings, with their own distinctive characters, not as numbers in a class or as units in an age group. Young people should be given specialist training for their chosen careers. That need cannot, in my view, be too strongly stated. Get our boys and girls from fifteen to sixteen on the right lines—that is on the lines most proper to their individual qualities—give them the most highly developed form of specialized technical training for work in that field, and one of the main problems of youth is solved. I wonder if we can hear from the Government whether they are taking steps to make provision along these lines.

Now I come to another most important provision that we must make for youth. We must safeguard their health. It is of little use giving them security at work and proper training for their minds if we neglect their bodies. May I again quote a few relevant facts on this matter? I have been looking at the annual reports of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education. The one from which I want to quote is again for the year 1935. That, I repeat, was a typical year. Let me take, first of all, the question of feeding. Feeding, I suppose, is the foundation of health. Inadequate food, I believe, causes more ill-health than any-other factor. The report that I have mentioned shows that no less than 10.6 per cent. of the children medically examined at school—that is, 10.6 per cent. of nearly a million and three-quarter children—were underfed. The figure was much the same in all the years of the decade before the war. I suggest to your Lordships that there is a problem that demands our most urgent attention when the war is over.

The noble Lord, Lord Woolton, has done magnificent things in this matter of food supply during the war. I remember reading, perhaps three months ago, a speech delivered in Scotland in which the Prime Minister said that the children of Glasgow were bigger and healthier in spite of the war-time restrictions on food supplies. That is a really remarkable thing, something for which the noble Lord deserves the highest praise. I think that this country owes a debt of gratitude to his Lordship that it can never adequately repay. Good health is not only, of course, a matter of feeding. While children are at school they have fairly good dental and medical services at their disposal, and I think that, while they are there, they benefit very much from them. But in the difficult formative years—that is, from the age of fourteen up to manhood and womanhood—there is, as far as I am aware, no organized health service at all. That is, I am sure your Lordships will agree, a most unfortunate gap in the provision the State has made for fostering public health. It is incredible that, at an age when so many rapid changes are taking place in the physical development of our young men and women, they should be suddenly bereft of much of the medical care to which they were accustomed when at school. Sir William Beveridge, in his Report which is being discussed at this moment in another place, puts forward a suggestion for an all-in free State medical service. If that goes through it will cover the young people to whom I am referring, and will fill the gap which I have mentioned; but if it does not go through it will be necessary to set up some form of health service primarily for the adolescent. Their health and physique are the foundations of everything else. As I have said, it is of little use training their minds, and giving them adequate cultural and social amenities, if their bodily health is not sound.

The service I have suggested must, of course, be closely linked with a big expansion of facilities for sport and recreation. In all our big residential districts and industrial regions there is an urgent need for more recreation grounds, open spaces, playing fields, swimming pools and so on. In the years before the war we witnessed a remarkable growth in outdoor recreation among young people. The enormous increase in the cycling and walking clubs, which no doubt your Lordships observed, was evidence of the strong desire to get away from the drab surroundings of the factory, warehouse, and office. Millions of our young people are now in the Forces. Their life there, in the open air and away from the routine of industry and commerce, will clearly have made a lasting impression on their minds. When they return to civil life, I am certain they will not be content to accept the rather crude, out-of-date, and impoverished facilities for outdoor recreation which existed before the war. They will want, and they undoubtedly should have, something on a much bigger scale, and it is the duty of the nation to see that they get it. Here I should like to pause for a minute to issue a word of warning—a warning against developing these things on any basis of regimentation. We do not want any form of Hitler Youth Movement in this country. That cannot be made too clear. But, equally clearly, we do want to give our youth the fullest possible enjoyment of all legitimate recreation according to the taste and free choice of the individual. I emphasize that—according to the taste and free choice of the individual.

Now I have dealt briefly, and I am afraid inadequately, with what I may call three foundation stones in the erection of adequate provision for the needs of our youth. They must have proper care for their bodies, they must have security of work, and they must have adequate training for their minds. But there is a fourth foundation stone—in many cases it is perhaps the most vital of all. We must take care of their moral and spiritual character. That I regard as vital. This is, I fear, to a large extent a materialistic age, and in everything we do, at all costs, we must see that our young men and women of to-morrow do not grow up with what I may call robot minds. Looking to the future, I should say that one of the greatest perils that may beset the human race is that the machine should dominate the soul—that man should one day become the victim of a terrible Frankenstein monster created by his own uncontrolled ingenuity. Never, in my opinion, was it more important to develop the finer qualities of character and the higher standards of spiritual life among our young people. I believe that those who are charged with the moral and spiritual welfare of our young people have a greater responsibility than most of us realize. The leaders of religion of all denominations, the teachers, and those who guide the destinies of young men and women hold the future of our young people in their hands. They hold in trust the future of the race, for the next generation will surely take its shape largely from the spiritual and moral character of our young people of to-day. Of this I am certain, that if the young people of this country are given proper encouragement in the higher ideals and aspirations of life, the vast majority of them will not be found wanting. Here may I, with very great respect, pay tribute to those leaders of religion—notable among them the most reverend Primates, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York—who have done so much lately to encourage the practical application of religion to every day affairs?

Now I must briefly touch on one or two other aspects of this question of youth. What provision, I wonder, is being made for properly equipped community or youth centres in every residential district? Those which do exist have, I am told, proved invaluable, particularly where young people themselves have a hand in control and direction. These centres should provide cultural amenities of all kinds, facilities for recreation, study, good fellowship, and a place where young people can get together to enjoy themselves, off the streets and away from the everyday circumstances of their lives. I do hope that the Government will take every possible measure, by monetary assistance or otherwise, to encourage the national-wide development of these youth community centres.

One of the great problems exercising the minds of many of us is that of juvenile delinquency. I know it is possible to exaggerate this difficulty, and also possible to under-estimate it. Juvenile crime is due to many causes. Relaxation of parental control and the break-up of family life, due to the war, are certainly largely responsible. There are, too, I am sorry to say, homes where the environment in which the children are brought up is absolutely demoralizing. We must not forget that young men and women have in recent years acquired a new freedom, and so far many of them have not learnt to use that freedom to advantage. Instead of converting their leisure to profit, they are bored, and they turn in their idle hours to unlawful acts to satisfy their natural desire for excitement and adventure. There has in recent years, I am glad to say, been evidence of considerable progress in dealing with this problem of juvenile crime. The authorities are looking more to helpful corrective measures than to punishment as the solution. It is the obligation of society to prevent crime rather than to seek the ideal treatment of the miscreant after the crime is committed. Provide these young children with more community centres, relieve them of boredom, give them a profitable alternative way of spending their spare time, train them in true citizenship, and many of them will keep out of the type of trouble that brings them so frequently to the notice of the law.

Then cannot something be done after the war to facilitate overseas travel for our young people—not merely the children of the well-to-do, but those also of the working and middle classes? I should like to see the Government organize a great overseas travel service for youth as quickly after the war as is humanly possible. Let us take them to the Dominions, to visit Europe, to see our good friends on the American Continent. I believe the effect would be incalculable. It would enlarge the outlook and broaden the minds of our young men and women, and contribute in the most practical way possible to a better understanding between the peoples of the nations. After all, our ignorance of one another is one of the fundamenal causes of war. Insularity breeds ignorance. Why not let us train our young people to be citizens not only of the country of their birth, but citizens of the world? Let us do this and we shall go a long way, I am certain, to make the peace which is to come a peace that will endure. The day when our young men and women should be taught and encouraged to think internationally has now surely come. I feel that this is a very important matter, and I hope the Government will do something, especially in this matter of overseas travel, as soon as the war is over. And may I also suggest that provision should be made for extended training in what is called civics or, as I prefer to call it, in the art of self-government? Every effort should be made to bring young people into active association with the various forms of democratic government, both nationally and locally. It should be, in my view, the obligation of all local authorities to help these young people on the eve of adult citizenship to know more about how their towns are run and managed. This, I believe, would materially contribute towards the development of that alert, informed and vigilant public opinion upon which democracy so much depends.

In all I have said there is one thing I want to make quite clear, as clear as it is humanly possible for me to make it, and that is that the work of the existing voluntary bodies catering for youth must go on alongside these new developments which I have suggested. Splendid work, magnificent work, has been done for youth by such organizations as the Boy Scouts, the Girl Guides, the Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations, the Youth Hostels Movement and the various religious youth organizations. No praise could be too high for the way in which these organizations have maintained their work despite, I am sorry to say in some cases, apathy on the part of the general public. Nothing must be done to restrict their activities. I do want to emphasize that. In spite of the provision by the State of the services I have mentioned, there will always be room—there must always be room—for the voluntary youth organization. Indeed, I would say that the State could do much more to assist these movements in their really valuable work.

How is all that I have outlined to be done, and who is to do it? There is, I believe, a Committee or Council under the direction of the Board of Education dealing with youth problems. It may well be that that body should be given wider powers and responsibilities. But even so, I think that the problem requires concentrated direction at a higher level. That would ensure that it was not lost sight of among the many other vast problems that the Government will have to deal with immediately this war is over. Youth is a national problem without adequate national representation, and without, if I may say so, a really bold, imaginative and co-ordinated national policy. I will not keep your Lordships more than another few moments. It is true that we have done much in recent years to wipe out the inhuman hardships inflicted upon our young people in the last two centuries. There is now greater kindliness, greater humanity, greater care in oar treatment of them, and the Government, I am glad to say, have taken steps to see that there shall be no repetition of the evils of the olden days. But there is still much to do. We are entitled to congratulate ourselves on what we have done, but we are not entitled to stand still and say we have done all we can. We must go forward with resolution, with considered plans, and with a deep sense of obligation to the rising generation.

There, my Lords, I will leave it. One could go on and produce a long catalogue of this and that provision for youth which ought to exist, but these are matters to be worked out by those responsible for dealing with the problem in the future. I shall be content if I have this afternoon established the general case that it is time now to make a bold effort to give our young people every chance to live happy and secure lives. I am not pleading for anything that would by over-elaborate organization destroy the individual independence and initiative of young people. Far from it. It would be wrong, quite wrong, absolutely wrong, as I hope my arguments have shown, to regard young people as rather a helpless lot who have to be taken in hand and nursed, as it were, by their more experienced elders. Their future clearly is primarily in their own hands. All we can do is to see that they are given every chance within the limits of our resources to rise to the topmost heights of citizenship. I know quite well that there are some who will say "Let all this wait." I do not agree. Among the many good things for which we are fighting to-day is a better future for the coming generation. This war will pass, and when its story is told it will be held to our undying credit that in the heat of the struggle we did not forget nor neglect our obligations to the coming generation. I beg to move.

THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK

My Lords, I am sure this House must be very grateful to the noble Lord, not only for bringing before us this most important subject, but also for the very comprehensive and interesting way in which he has dealt with it. Youth work during the war has had many set-backs. Premises which were used as clubs have been commandeered, large numbers of youth workers have been called away, and there has been a general restlessness among the younger generation which has made youth work peculiarly difficult. But against all that there has been rising what I think I can call a youth consciousness on the part of the nation. There are many more people to-day deeply concerned about the future of the youth of this nation than there were a few years ago. We see how much we owe to them. There have been many kinds of heroism in the "blitzed" towns on the part of young boys and young girls. We feel that for the future of the nation we must husband and care for all the resources of youth which we possess. I find myself in entire agreement with all that has been said by the noble Lord who has just spoken. There is nothing I can criticize in his speech; I support all the suggestions he has made.

We must approach this problem of youth from various points of view. We must, of course, approach it from the point of view of education. I need not dwell upon this, it is now agreed by all educationists and I think by all people of common sense that most of the education which our boys and girls receive is wasted when they leave school at the age of fourteen. There is general agreement that the age should be as soon as possible raised to fifteen and as soon as possible after that to sixteen, and that there also should be a part-time education. There is one word I want to say about this part-time education. Very frequently it is assumed that this education should take place during the leisure time of the youths in the evening. That is a mistake. It means that a boy, after a long day's work, has to go home, wash and dress, and then to go out again, perhaps some considerable distance. Very often by the time he reaches the place where he is to receive further education, he is tired and sleepy. I have noticed sometimes, even in your Lordships' House, at an early hour of the afternoon, members of the House with closed eyes following their own train of thought, which probably his no very strong connexion with the eloquent words which are being addressed to them. I must quite frankly confess that I myself occasionally, while present in the body, have been absent in the spirit when remarks were being addressed to us. If that is so with us, a trained assembly of people accustomed to listening to speeches, how much more difficult it must be to the boy or girl who has had long hours of previous work.

Next I would stress what the noble Lord said about the importance of youth having employment, and the right kind of employment. He has given us some tragic figures of the amount of unemployment which is sometimes found among our boys and girls. I can confirm what he has said. There is nothing which is more demoralizing to the young person than a period of unemployment. It has a worse effect on him than over-crowding or poverty. It means that he loses heart and unless he is of a very strong character he becomes rapidly demoralized and bitter. I remember some fourteen or fifteen years ago the manager of one of our boys' clubs in South London saying to me that the boys there were saying that they wished a war would come. He was taken aback and asked why; and the answer was: "If there is a war they will be bound to find us work." I cannot exaggerate the harm which a long period of unemployment does to the growing boy. It is also important that he should have the right kind of work. If you put a boy into work which almost automatically comes to an end at the age of eighteen, and then throw him on the streets, he meets with bitter disappointment. Of course some blind-alley employment in present conditions is almost inevitable, but the evil result of this would not be so serious if, during the time the boy is in temporary work, he was being prepared educationally for some trade which afterwards he would take up permanently. That would obviate the worst evils of blind-alley employment, but it is impossible to take too much trouble to see that the boy does get into the right kind of work or that, if for a time he is in work which does not lead to permanency, he is receiving the right kind of training for what will be his future life work.

I turn to the other approach, the approach to the boy's leisure. I am not certain if it is always realized how important is this problem of leisure. There are in the week 168 hours. Of those 114 are spent in eating, sleeping and working, but 54 are left for leisure. A large number of people, both old and young, have no idea of how they can best use their leisure. To some it is an opportunity of killing time instead of for the recreation of body and mind. There are a number of young people already in various organizations, but they are in a minority. The mass of our younger people are not in connexion with any kind of organization. It is true that now, at the age of sixteen, they are compulsorily registered. They have then to go before a committee. The committee gives them good advice, but they need not take that advice and large numbers of them do not take it. We need to make much more provision for the leisure hours of the younger generation.

I am very grateful for what the noble Lord has said about the work which has been done and is being done by the voluntary societies. They were first in the field. Under great difficulties they have been carrying on splendid work with a great army of voluntary helpers, and I hope that in any steps the State takes it will call into the fullest co-operation all those voluntary societies; that it will not regard them as rivals, that it will not merely tolerate them, but will be ready to help and encourage them in every way in its power. But notwithstanding all the voluntary organizations which have been in existence and are in existence to-day, there is a great deal which ought to be done. The State ought to provide many more buildings and the State ought to open various opportunities for recreation in different kinds of ways. Great community centres are required for the younger generation as well as for those who are older. The building, however, is not everything. There are some people who think that if you put up a splendid building with gymnasia, baths, and so on, you have really solved the problem. But that is not so.

I have been in the same week into very different club buildings. I once went into a perfectly magnificent building equipped with everything modern science and architecture could suggest, and in that building there were lolling about a few leisured young men. The manager of the club explained to me that I had come there on an unfortunate night. I believe if I had gone there any other night that week I should have had the same explanation given to me. The same week I went to a club in a back street. The premises were wretched but the rooms were crowded with life, enthusiasm, fellowship and vigour. What was the reason for the difference? The difference really was in the leader. In one club there was a man who knew how to lead and not to drive the boys, who knew how to sympathize with them and to encourage them and to help them to the full, instead of being a dictator. I am certain that we shall not in any way solve the problem of the leisure of the boys unless we have the right kind of leaders. If I may, I will recall a personal reminiscence. Many years ago a young officer offered to take charge of a club for two or three days when the leader was absent. The officer was a gallant man who had his reward for gallantry. He went off happily to the club. In a. few hours' time he appeared at the clergy house looking somewhat dishevelled. We asked him if the club had closed. The reply was: "No, the young imps have turned me out, locked the door and are now smashing up the furniture." That is, I am afraid, the unfortunate fate of many well-meaning but untrained leaders who attempt to take charge of large clubs. If you start large clubs without the right kind of leaders you are merely opening a large number of bear gardens. Almost everything does depend on the leader. Therefore in any schemes which the Government have for education and the use of leisure, it is quite essential that they should give the most careful thought and care to the training of the leaders of these clubs.

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for what he said at the end about the importance of these clubs and this youth movement having a moral and spiritual side. I hope that the moral and spiritual side will not be merely an emotional uplift but that it will be based on religion. I do not believe you can really have a lasting moral spirit unless it is built on religion. I know how difficult this problem is. The difficulty does not lie so much in the difference between denominations. I believe we can very easily agree on a policy. The difficulty is how we can naturally bring religion into these clubs which are formed for other purposes. I believe that if the Government were to consult those who have most first-hand experience in these matters they would gain a number of very valuable suggestions and recommendations. I am certain that this side must not be neglected, otherwise you will run the danger of something like the Hitler Youth Movement. You will have a number of young people vigorous, physically strong, possibly very patriotic in the narrower sense of the term, but they will not have the love of God from which the love of man must naturally come, and they will be without those virtues of unselfishness and pity which are necessary for the complete man into whom we hope the youth of to-day will grow.

LORD LATHAM

My Lords, I would like your indulgence to offer a few observations upon this important topic of youth. Youth is to-morrow and tomorrow is youth, and whatever success we may achieve, at arms or otherwise, to-day, unless it can be enjoyed by instructed, informed youth to-morrow, it may be largely wasted. And yet there is perhaps no more delicate problem than that of guiding adolescents. They need, as the noble Lord, Lord Southwood, who introduced this Motion, said, neither to be compelled nor coddled. They wish to be allowed, under such guidance as is appropriate, to develop their own personalities. Adolescence with each of us is all too fleeting a period of our lives, and youth must be encouraged to develop its own personality, its own colour, its own romance and its own ethical and spiritual conception of citizenship and of manhood and womanhood. But we can provide the conditions under which that essential expression of youthful personality can properly take place.

I feel that in this matter, as in other matters of education, or matters relating to education, it is largely a question of social policy. We must in our social policy provide for the conditions which would admit of the best development of youth. We must all agree with sadness with the remark which the most reverend Prelate, the Archbishop of York, has just made, to the effect that in all too many cases the education received by children during the period of compulsory school attendance is largely wasted in after life. It is largely wasted because, in many cases, the social conditions that exist are not appropriate to its survival. One of the most destructive factors of the benefits of teaching in the schools up to the age of fourteen is the bad housing conditions to which many of the children return. It is a fact that is deplored by all those concerned with education that the good manners which are taught in the schools, the habits of cleanliness which are taught in the schools, and which so long as the school influence is present are practised, are soon lost after a boy or girl leaves school and returns, in many cases, to unsatisfactory individual housing conditions or general housing conditions, and goes into employment in a factory or in a shop, or, indeed, in some offices which are not appropriate to the preservation of those qualities which they have been taught within the State elementary school system. One of the most important directions in which this nation must move, not only from the point of view of the general health of the nation, not only from the point of view of the general comfort of the nation, but also in order to preserve the educational value of its own educational system, is in the direction of a rapid improvement of the housing conditions in the urban areas of this country. No efforts of teachers can survive the influences, the destructive influences, of slumdom.

The problem of dealing with youth has, itself, passed beyond the age when attendance at school is compulsory, and it can be summed up, I think, in three requirements. One is that youth needs time to develop itself. There should, therefore, be shorter hours of work for youth. There should also be provision for satisfactory holidays. I entirely agree with what the most reverend Prelate, the Archbishop of York, says about the necessity of the time for continued education coming from the working day and not from the leisure hours of youth. If I may be a little reminiscent, as he was, I would tell your Lordships that many years ago I taught in the evenings in one of the educational institutions of the London County Council, and I was struck then with the fact of how tired most of my pupils were. This was mainly because they were juniors in offices, required to be there first, and, normally, permitted to leave last. When they came to the classes which I had the obligation to teach, in many instances they were not in a fit physical or mental condition to profit in the best way from the instruction which I sought to give and which I hope I succeeded in giving them. Part-time education, therefore; must become day-time instruction. I hope that in providing part-time continuation educational facilities we shall not emphasize too much the technical and occupational side of that education. It is desirable, as has been said, that those who temporarily take up blind-alley employment should be taught to follow other employment and to equip themselves for other duties and responsibilities; but I think it would be unfortunate if we commence day continuation education with too much emphasis upon the technical or occupational aspects of it. It should be regarded as a continuation of education. We do not want the scholars to walk out of the factory in which they are employed into another building where they will be concerned only with the same questions and the same problems as those with which they were concerned when working in the factory; they must also be given an opportunity of learning what life is, in addition to learning how to make a living.

The next necessity is space, and space for recreation, not necessarily for build- ings. The more recreational facilities we can provide, with the fewest buildings, the better. In the great cities of this country, however, it is difficult to find the open spaces necessary for adequate recreational facilities. I think that all London was inspired by the idea of the Green Belt outside London, but those of us who were responsible for that project would have been even more inspired if we could have found a green belt within London. The Government must realize that if proper facilities are to be provided for games and sports, and even for simple rest, provision must be made for local authorities to acquire adequate open spaces within their own towns, or very near them. The third necessity is the development, as the most reverend Prelate has said, of the capacity to utilize and enjoy leisure. I have always thought that the most important thing that a child needs to be taught is how to play, and that is no less important when the child becomes fifteen, sixteen or seventeen years of age. The enjoyment of leisure is in fact a development of the ability to play, and facilities must be provided which will enable boys and girls not only to become more proficient at their trade, or at the particular avocation which they may choose, but to realize their inner resources on the cultural, ethical and spiritual plane.

Finally, I should like to say that one great danger which faces the youth movements of this country is that they may be too much guided by what we are apt to regard as adult omniscience. Those of us who are interested in the service of youth may find ourselves, without any intention, creating a servitude of youth, a regimentation of youth. If that were the case, so far from developing the capacity to enjoy leisure, so far from lifting youth, or enabling youth to fit itself, for the problems of citizenship of this country and of the world, we shall have done the contrary. The voluntary organizations, which have clone very fine work, especially in the earlier years, when the fields of this endeavour were more or less completely unfilled, should join in this work. I agree entirely that we should seek to secure their co-operation with those agencies which are in partnership with the State in the provision of general educational facilities, and that, coupled with an improvement, and an essential improvement, in the social conditions, those agencies should all co-operate to provide the con- ditions and to give the counsel to enable youth to realize itself.

LORD SOMERS

My Lords, I do not wish to detain your Lordships for very long, but I should like to say that the noble Lord, Lord Southwood, by moving this Motion, has earned the gratitude of all those associated with me in the voluntary youth organizations of the country. We have felt for some time that official approval or disapproval of such sentiments as the noble Lord expressed in his speech should be given by your Lordships' House. There has not been a debate on the subject in this House for a considerable period, and we are therefore very grateful to the noble Lord for initiating one. Obviously the noble Lord had to cover a very wide field in his speech, and he could not do full justice to the many aspects of the subject which he brought to your Lordships' attention.

In speaking for the voluntary organizations, I wish to acknowledge most gratefully the tributes paid by the noble Lord and others to the work done by these voluntary organizations. I can assure you that those who devote their time to voluntary leadership in these organizations do so, not from any motive of personal ambition, but from a very real feeling of vocation, a feeling that they want to help, and because they realize the importance of the work which they are trying to accomplish. I wish that the Government would realize to a greater extent the importance of the work which the voluntary organizations are trying to do. A great deal of lip service is paid to it in high quarters, but, when it comes to practical matters, the voluntary associations get very little help. When it was a question, for instance, of finding accommodation for various Service units at the beginning of this war, the very first buildings to be taken over were such buildings as boys' clubs, Scout headquarters, Girl Guide headquarters and so on, even though either buildings were obviously available and could easily have been found. That is only too often the official attitude when it comes to practical help such as we require.

Then there is the question of leadership. I must obviously confine myself to the leisure part of the child's life. I cannot deal with the question of education, because that has already been dealt with more capably than I could deal with it. So far as leisure is concerned, I was delighted to hear the most reverend Prelate point out what an enormous proportion of the twenty-four hours is, or should be, devoted to leisure, and how important it is that leisure should be put in the right direction. Frittered away leisure ceases to be leisure altogether, and that is what we generally occupy ourselves with. But we are extremely conscious of the handicap which we have to contend with in such things as bad housing conditions, and I was very glad indeed that the noble Lord, Lord Latham, mentioned bad housing conditions, because we maintain that a great deal of the leisure time spent by the child should be spent at its own home, that too much organization of leisure outside the home is not good, and that the home influence itself should be of paramount importance when you are dealing with the leisure of the child. But in the circumstances referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Latham, favourable conditions do not exist, and the child is not able to find the room or the opportunity for the occupations that we try to teach. So we are extremely conscious of the handicap of bad housing in what we try to do in the way of organizing leisure.

Another thing mentioned by the noble Lord who moved this Motion is adequate nourishment, and that is of great importance. It is perfectly hopeless trying to teach a child to enjoy organized games when it has an empty stomach and cannot find the energy to play. These two things, adequate housing and adequate nourishment, are things which we must leave to the Government to deal with—they are outside the scope of the voluntary societies, outside the scope of the Board of Education. Given those two sound backgrounds, the voluntary societies, I think, can fulfil their purpose very well indeed. We have a wide range of choice, we have an adequate number of leaders, and I think after this war is over you will find that men and women who come back will return to civilian life with a different view of their obligations to their country. You will find, even more than in the past—and the numbers have been considerable—that there will be a great number of men and women anxious for the first time to take their part in the training of this all-important section of the community. I look forward with confidence to finding the necessary leadership to take on the organization of the leisure of these children and young adults after the war.

There is one thing I hope will come from this debate. From the obviously sympathetic manner in which your Lordships have listened to the speeches already made I feel that you have sympathy with the views that have been expressed. I want to put forward one plea with regard to the leaders in these various organizations. The necessity for adequate training has been stressed by the most reverend Prelate, the Archbishop of York. I would put forward this plea, that leaders, whether they are in Government offices or in industry, or wherever they may be, should be allowed and encouraged to attend training courses of their appropriate bodies in addition to the normal holiday they get during the war. I think this is most important. Your Lordships will, I feel certain, agree with the noble Lord, Lord Southwood, when he pointed out how extremely important it is that children up to the age, at any rate, of eighteen should be guided adequately in their youth and leisure, quite apart from the other matters which the noble Lord mentioned. It is also most important that the leaders who have the guidance and direction of these children in their various activities should be adequately trained. The voluntary societies are able and willing to give the training and provide the facilities for this training, but in, many cases the holiday that could be spent at these training courses is already taken up by the demands of their families; that is to say, they must have their holidays with their families, and there is no other time except occasional week-ends when these training courses can be attended. It is in the interests of these young people that their leaders should have adequate facilities for attending the training courses, and the training courses, in order to be really effective, ought to be continuous, and not confined to week-ends. I put that forward as a suggestion for your Lordships to consider.

Noble Lords who have spoken have mentioned the word "facilities" Very few of the voluntary societies require many facilities, though they do want some. The noble Lord, Lord Latham, referred to playing fields and open spaces. There are many towns, large and small, in this country which have their football grounds, which are played on once a week by twenty-two well-trained athletes, but for the rest of the time you may sit outside the walls that surround them and not even get a look at the grass. I think all of us hope that in the post-war planning of built-up areas the authorities will consider the needs of the voluntary societies, and consult them as to what they want. If they consult me I want a small plot of ground, nothing else; if they consult the people who require to build more elaborate places, they may want a little bit more. But we do not want to find the whole of an area built up so that we have to go begging afterwards for a plot of ground where we can carry on our facilities. Once more I should like to thank the noble Lord who initiated this debate, and I hope that, the subject having been brought forward, the Government will give it the utmost possible sympathy and encouragement.

VISCOUNT MONCK

My Lords, I should like first of all to associate myself most warmly with the noble Lord, Lord Somers, and to say how extremely grateful to him we in the voluntary organizations are, as well as to the noble Lord who initiated this debate. The subject is not one with so much panoply and excitement as some others which are discussed in your Lordships' House, especially in these days, but it is none the less important for all that. I think we were all very much struck by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Southwood, when he pointed out that children who were still at school when the war started will be called up for active service during the next year. We might realize also that children who are now leaving school will, in a short generation, be directing the interests and prosperity of, this country.

As your Lordships will remember, some few years ago the Government inaugurated the policy which is generally known as Service of Youth. To put it briefly, Service of Youth meant that the voluntary organizations which for many years, with a certain amount of success but not very much assistance or gratitude, had carried on the work of adolescent youth training, were going to be supported and helped by the Board of Education. I think I am right in saying that in the original pamphlet or leaflet which came out describing Service of Youth it was referred to as a co-partnership between the Board of Education and the voluntary organizations. I should like to take this opportunity of saying, first of all, that the help which the voluntary organizations have received from the Board in the last two years has been enormous. It has been not only enormous, but it has been most valuable, and the voluntary organizations have been enabled to do a vast number of things and to get through a colossal quantity of work, with opportunities of help and sympathy, which otherwise they would not have been able to perform.

That is one side of the question, but there are, I regret to say, one or two flies in the ointment. We have had that help, and we are most grateful for it. We have had something which is sometimes better than help—namely, sympathy and co-operation. We are very grateful for that too, but now and again certain things are done, certain things are said, which make one wonder what is going to be the outcome of tins co-partnership. For instance, when we get somebody using words to this effect, that the voluntary organizations should concern themselves a little less with the Board of Education's future intentions and interest themselves more in planning their own policies, you really begin to wonder what the utterer of these words is driving at. Your Lordships will realize that unless the voluntary organizations have some idea of the Board of Education's future policy, they might just as well not waste their time in planning. To put it rather bluntly, it is felt in certain quarters that the time has come when the voluntary organizations should be told whether their services in future are going to be necessary or not.

I should like to give an illustration of the confusion and doubt which exist. Where most of the confusion is taking place is under the local education authorities. I wish it were possible—if I may use an awful word—to "rationalize" the local education authorities. Up and down the country there is a very great number of them, and you find the most widely varying and differing policies being adopted. Some authorities have gone to the voluntary organizations and said: "You know more about this work than we do—will you carry on with what you are doing, while we shall give you every support and facility?" Other local edu- cation authorities have said that the Service of Youth is entirely their business, and they do not want anybody else interfering in it. Others have said that they would make no grants towards buildings unless the buildings themselves were vested in the local education authorities. I do not want to go into the technicalities of that, but suffice it to say that such a policy would be a great hindrance to the organization making use of that building.

Then there is another point, and that is that many local education authorities refuse grants to church clubs. Some of them do not actually refuse grants, but they stipulate that where a grant is made to a church club, whatever is provided by that grant should be made available to anybody and everybody, whether a member of the club or not. Then again, though grants are given towards the salaries of leaders—club leaders and centre leaders—grants are invariably refused for organizers. That again is a great handicap. Lastly, it is known to some numbers of people that persons occupying positions of high rank in local education authorities have stated that they do not believe in voluntary organizations, and they are not going to be bothered with them. Thus you have a great number of varying outlooks and viewpoints up and down the country, which makes it extremely difficult to work in harmony and partnership. If I may revert to the question of church clubs, I do not think you will find anybody concerned with the voluntary youth movement denying that, as a whole, the church clubs are the cream of the club world. I am not going to suggest that every church club is of the very highest quality—the most reverend Primate would be the first to support me in that view—but, taken on the average, they do provide the cream of the youth world.

I should like to quote what was said by someone who, if he is not the most famous leader of youth in this country, is very near to being so, a man who has worked for years on youth work, and who has a greater knowledge of it than probably anyone else in this country to-day. He was addressing some boys' club leaders, and he said this: It is your bounden duty to be in touch with the parish priest. If you see a young priest wringing his hands because he cannot get the boys to the church, go and drag him into your club so that he may make his contacts there. That does illustrate the point of view that is taken by all those really concerned with youth work. You must have your religious influence in your club or your club will not prosper. I know that in this country we are afraid of driving people into something which we feel they ought to decide for themselves. The question of politics has been mentioned, and we all know the position there. We have been so careful not, to talk politics to our youth that now they do not know what a rural district council or a local district council do; they do not know the meaning of the terms. It is most important that we should look after these church clubs and see that they get the same treatment as is given to any other club in the country.

One other point to which I wish to refer concerns grants to organizers. I know perfectly well that grants are made by the Board, and generous grants too, to national organizations, and these national organizations are supposed to pay organizers from these grants. Let me cite an instance of which I know. There-is an organizer in a certain county who is working for some seven or eight different girls' organizations. Your Lordships will appreciate that though it is a generous sum of money which is at their disposal, it is not a large amount, and these organizations are not prepared to pay what I may call an adequate sum for the support of this lady when they have their own full-time organizers who do them more good. Therefore, although this particular lady is doing an enormous amount of good Work, which everybody realizes, she cannot get the money for her salary from these organizations, and the Board is precluded from paving it. I suggest that that is a matter which wants attention and action. We all know that in this war raw materials have been in much lower supply than they were in the past. Those of us engaged in industry and commerce know that to our cost; but there is one raw material which, unfortunately, does not seem to have decreased in supply, and in fact your Lordships would agree, were it 100 per cent, in Axis hands, we should not suffer thereby. I refer to red tape. Although it may be necessary during the war to retain red tape, I implore and beg the Government not to allow red tape to stand in the way of youth work.

There is one other matter to which I wish to refer, and on which I fear I wearied your Lordships about two years ago; that is the psychology of youth work. It has been said by more than one person in the country that obvious and ideal buildings for this youth work are those splendid senior schools we see all over the countryside to-day, and that the teachers are the best people to act as youth leaders. In some places there is no other building, and there is no other leader, and willy-nilly that building and that teacher must be employed, but I do beg those who are concerned with this question to realize the psychological aspect. They should realize that the boy and the girl who most need adolescent youth training are the boy and the girl who have not had a. peculiarly happy school life. If you ask them to go back to the building which reminds them of unhappy days and unhappy hours, and put them again under the care and inspection of the man or the woman who, through no fault of his or hers, was looked upon not as their friend but as their enemy, I think you are asking too much of those boys and girls. I do most emphatically suggest that those in authority should not try In and rationalize in this way the actual building and instruction. In your voluntary organizations you have workers with an absolute wealth of enthusiasm for their job and a tremendous knowledge of it, and I suggest that the best possible use should be made of that knowledge and enthusiasm.

I desire next to turn to another point which is rather important to-day, and that is the pre-Service training organization. My noble friend Lord Bridgeman, who presides with such efficiency and ability over the Army Cadet Force, will support me in saying that the co-operation between the Army Cadet Force and the National Association of Boys' Clubs is a very happy and fruitful one. The noble Viscount had the foresight to see that whatever may be the future of pre-Service training organizations after the war, whether they decrease in numbers, whether they cease to exist or whether they increase, it is for the good of the boy and the girl to have a civil youth training as well as a military one. I am not going to bandy prophecies here with him to-day, and I will leave it at that. He in fact has said that full co-operation with existing youth organizations is the key-note of the policy to be followed by those responsible for the pre-Service training organization on the boys' side with the Army Cadet Force and the National Association of Boys' Clubs, and that co-operation is warm and thorough, but, curious to relate, on the girls side it does not exist. The opposite number to the Army Cadet Force is the Girls Training Corps, and there for some reason there does not seem to be a desire to co-operate with the civil girls' organizations as is the case on the boys' side. I would like to ask the noble Earl who is to reply for the Government if he would inquire into that situation. We all know the short-lived enthusiasm of the female sex. To my mind, it is very probable that as soon as we cease being a warlike nation and begin to have peace again, the excitement of wearing a uniform will die down, so that if you have not got them embraced in some sort of civil youth organization they will go out of youth training altogether and you will have all the trouble of getting them back again.

One or two noble Lords who have spoken to-day have stressed the need for having variety in youth work. We do not want a Hitler Youth Movement or anything like that. The existing voluntary organizations do provide that variety. Is that necessary or is it not? I feel it is only common sense to say that it is necessary. We have got boys and girls with different characters, we have boys and girls in different employment. If they have different characters, if they are going into different employment, or if they are in different employment, surely their adolescent teaching instruction must also differ. Consider this analogy. We all know of the existence of that grand body of young people, the Sea Scouts. Let us assume that you said that every boy under the age of eighteen was to be a Sea Scout. Those whom the very sight of the sea makes sea-sick would not get on very well in that organization. The noble Earl who is to reply for the Government is, as we know, an eminent agriculturist. He knows perfectly well that every crop needs different treatment and every field needs different cultivation, and if that is necessary for the more material things like crops and fields I submit it is still more necessary for the young girls and young boys who are going to take care of this country in the future.

Lastly we come back to this. We have had in some ways a tremendous advantage from the. Service of Youth originated by the Board of Education, but there are certain anomalies which have to be corrected and certain other things to be put in order to ensure smooth working. I should like, if I may, to quote what was said by an eminent leader who has run a club himself. He is a reverend gentleman and he said this: It seems to me of the greatest importance that the Board should come out unequivocally on the side of what was, I believe, its original policy and should rid us of any fear that it is itself contemplating the assumption of responsibility for the direction and control of youth work. The question really is a simple one: Is the Board the friend or the enemy of voluntary bodies, whether these be the Church National Association of Boys' Clubs, Boy Scouts or anything else? That is put rather bluntly, but that is the question. I know the noble Earl who is to reply will in his kindness assure us that these matters shall have attention, but I beg him to go further and say that he will see that attention is given to them.

VISCOUNT BRIDGEMAN

My Lords, I want to intervene in this debate for one moment only, to thank my noble friend who has just sat down for his reference to the work of the Army Cadet Force. We in that Force set the greatest possible value on the co-operation we have had from the National Association of Boys' Clubs. I myself from all I have seen and heard of the open cadet units—those units not in school—I am quite convinced that club life and cadet life are two parts of the training of the boy, and that neither is complete without the other.

THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON

My Lords, this subject is indeed a vast one and I feel that I can only touch on one or two points in dealing with it. I should like first to express my very great agreement with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Southwood, and to associate myself with what he said. I feel that he has made a very important contribution to this most important subject. It is a most refreshing sign to see the amount of agreement on all sides of the House upon its importance. The only disagree- ments we can find are two: one to a certain extent as to the lines on which youth shall be cared for and educated, and the other as to the degree of the national income which will be devoted to the service of youth. As far as I am concerned, I should like to see a much greater proportion of the national income given to this cause, which I think is worthy of very great sacrifice indeed. Obviously the importance of training in the years of childhood and the years of adolescence on the formation and growth of character, capabilities and ideas is almost unlimited, and upon the training during those years must rest the responsibility for the future of this country and the future of our generation. Considering that very great responsibility I do not think I can agree that enough is done for this very important class of person.

To begin at the very beginning, the expectant mother often has to wait until the last moment before she can go into hospital because the hospitals are so crowded. The consequent anxiety and strain must have a very severe effect on her constitution and her nervous system. Some of your Lordships may have been following the correspondence in The Times recently about the need for postnatal homes. Obviously a period of fourteen days, or in some cases only ten days, after which the mother has to resume her duties in her house looking after a large family, is far too short. I urge the creation of more post-natal homes or the provision of some other facilities, so that the mother can have attention and rest for a longer period after the birth of her child, particularly in the case of the first child. I am afraid that this lack of care goes on to a certain extent all through the period of education both in elementary schools and in secondary schools. Here I should like to urge what to my mind is the most important point of all: that is, that the school-leaving age should be raised to at least sixteen. If this cannot be done now, I hope that plans will be made so that it can be put into effect immediately after the war.

The period from five to twelve years of age is, we all know, vastly important in the life of the child, but so is the period from twelve to sixteen years of age because not only is it in those later years that mental development begins, but that period covers also adolescence when medical attention is most urgently needed for the welfare of the child. The provision of medical attention for children over fourteen is most unsatisfactory. Up to that period there are three medical inspections, the first being on entry into school, with a more cursory intermediary inspection. I should like these inspections to be much more thorough and to be made at least annually with greater facilities for medical treatment for children who need it. It is not possible in this debate to go into the whole question of medical inspection, but I should like to take as an example the care of the teeth. Most medical men will agree that there are certain periods when there is a greater tendency to caries or decay. The whole health of the child is adversely affected if there is anything seriously wrong with the teeth because toxins are created which affect the whole system. It is vital that the teeth should be in as good a condition as possible. The actual position I regard as not at all satisfactory. I would urge, in the first place, that dental inspection should be carried out at least once a year—I know that the war situation makes that very difficult—or if not once a year at any rate once in two years.

The matter, however, does not rest there. Even if inspections have been carried out at elementary schools no treatment of the children is possible until the consent of the parents has been obtained. That has had an extremely bad effect. In the year 1936 out of 2,425,000 children who were reported as requiring treatment, only 1,536,000 received treatment. That is to say 36 per cent. of cases needing treatment did not get any. Very similar figures can be quoted for other years. In 1932 the percentage was 38.7 and in 1933, 38.9. There are two reasons for that result. One I have already indicated, that the parents' consent to treatment has to be obtained. The second is that a fee—not a very great fee—is charged to the parents. The two reasons in combination resulted in 1936 in 36 per cent. of the children not receiving dental treatment. The resultant bad health is really alarming. As a cure for this I would like to suggest to the Government that they should consider whether two things could not be done. Firstly, whether more free treatment could not be given both in elementary and secondary schools; and, secondly, whether it could not be made legal for the child to receive treatment automatically if inspection reveals the need for it unless the parents had previously stated in. writing that they did not wish treatment to be given.

I think that, under the law, if a doctor treats the child without the parents' consent that is technically an act of assault. I am not sure of the legal position, but anyway doctors are debarred from giving treatment without the parents' consent. If some alteration were made in that law that change, plus free treatment, might result in nearly all children getting necessary treatment for their teeth. There should be some campaign of education of the population about the importance of this subject. I was talking to a village woman not long ago who complained bitterly of severe toothache from a decayed tooth. I asked her why she did not go to see a dentist and she said that the decay would probably get better. When we remember the resultant indigestion and poisoning of the system that can follow decay of the teeth, one realizes how unfortunate it must be if the view is prevalent that people have only to wait for the decay to get better

Then there is the question of nourishment, and on that I should like to ask the Government to accept my congratulations on the magnificent work which has been done in providing cheap milk for children. The enormous benefits which have resulted cannot be over-estimated, and I should very much like to see the provision of a mid-day meal extended. I should like to see this made a duty of the local authorities, and not merely something that is within their powers. It would make a lot of difference to the health of the population if the children could have a mid-day meal, particularly in rural areas, where in many instances they have to go long distances to school and often take with them very poor lunches from a health point of view, possibly just potatoes and a piece of cheese. The children then would have a meal giving them the necessary vitamins which they require to build up their constitutions.

I should like, further, to direct your Lordships' attention for one moment to a matter pertaining to the general lines of education. I agree very strongly with my noble friend Lord Latham, when he urges that education should not be entirely technical and that some very great part of it should be devoted to developing the general mentality of the child, so as to fit him for the tasks of life as well as for an occupation. It seems to me that that is extremely necessary, because if we are going to have, as I hope we shall, an even greater and stronger democracy in the future, we must have a thinking population. Only by not merely cramming the child with facts but by teaching him to consider and to judge for himself can we ensure that the people of this country will think for themselves, and in this way make our democracy a living and a working thing. A lot of extremely good results have, I believe, been achieved by the experimental schools. They have been criticized, and no doubt there have been some failures. But I think they have made many valuable discoveries. I would urge that in any new mode or scheme of education there should be some loophole allowed or arranged whereby these experimental schools can continue to function as laboratories of research in education, for without research everything stagnates, and if you get stagnation in education general rot, I am afraid, will set in.

LORD ABERDARE

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Southwood, to whom we are all I am sure very grateful for initiating this debate, has raised a subject of immense proportions and great ramifications. The age of youth is not laid down, but I take it that we are considering the ages of from fourteen plus to twenty. But in case any reference should be made to the younger age I would like to express the hope that the President of the Board of Education will shortly, in his Education Bill, be bringing in certain clauses which will undoubtedly improve the religious education in our schools. And I hope that he will follow the lines laid down by the National Society for Religious Education. It is not that I am stressing entirely the teaching of religion, but because of the desire which I have to see a more Christian way of life being led in the schools, not only in the classrooms, but also, I trust, on the playgrounds and on the playing fields, for there a great deal can be done in teaching young people the Christian way of life by teaching them to abide by the rules and to play up and play the game. In case I do not get another opportunity of doing so, I would like to say something which may perhaps be thought to be a little wide of the Motion. I would like to refer to the German youth and to express a hope that consideration is being given to the problem of how to tackle the problem when the war ends. Of course one of the most drastic ways would be to tell the Germans that they must learn English. We should then get rid of much of the poison that has developed, in that future generations could not read what had been written. But although the learning of English would undoubtedly be a great help to the German nation, incidentally in matters of commerce that suggestion is probably impracticable. I suppose the only way of dealing with the matter would be to leave it to the Germans to teach their young people in a certain way. I hope the United Nations will see that the poison which has been brought into the German nation by what is written is destroyed, and that a new line is adopted so that the youth of Germany may be brought up in the right way, and may learn the true history of past events.

The subject of the debate is a big one and my noble friend the Chief Scout and Lord Monck, the Vice-Chairman of the National Association of Boys' Clubs, have dealt with the matters in which I am particularly interested so fully and so very much more eloquently than I can, that I do not intend to go over the ground again. I would like, however, to refer to one subject in particular, and, if I may be allowed to do so, now and then, perhaps in passing, also to one or two other subjects. This matter divides itself into two divisions. There are the questions of better education and of the useful employment of leisure time for the youth of the nation. As regards the question of education, I would like to express the hope that in the very near future we shall hear that the school-leaving age is being brought up to fifteen, and that as soon as it becomes practicable, through the training of teachers and the provision of buildings, there is to be a further extension. At the same time, I trust that the question of compulsory day continuation schools will be considered and that there will be enforcement in this connexion. I would also like consideration to be given to the question of some compulsory training for six months or one year. This might give very valuable results at the present time. No doubt just now the training would be military, but eventually a scheme might be developed which would mean a special form of training, based possibly very much on the lines of physical education, and designed to give an opportunity for youths of a certain age—it might be eighteen or nineteen or twenty—to get certain advantages which they have missed and a good start in life on the way to become useful citizens.

Then as regards my chief subject, the problem, as I see it, as a supporter of the voluntary organizations—which incidentally I must state I do not represent, though I think I can safely say that I am a friend trusted by all—is to ensure a healthy relationship between voluntary organizations and local education authorities. It seems to me imperative that the voluntary organizations should be more encouraged and supported. Many of your Lordships, I am sure, realize the great importance of these voluntary organizations, their value in character training and in helping to make good future citizens, and I need not enlarge on that, because I think that the words of the most reverend Primate of England were sufficient for the purpose. I should like to add something to what the noble Lord, Lord Southwood, said in referring to those voluntary organizations which are doing valuable work in this country; I should like to include the boys' clubs and the girls' clubs. He probably intended to mention them. I think that the Board of Education are entirely ready and willing to help. It is a great compliment to the voluntary organizations that the State has recognized their utility and the need for them. Many of the great things which have happened in this country have come about owing to the work of a voluntary organization which, when it has reached a certain point, has been adopted by the State. I am perfectly content with the two circulars which have been referred to, Nos.1486 and 1516. It is said, however, that certain influential members of local authorities wish to have complete control of local youth work, and also want to run their own evening institutes and their own clubs—sometimes in combination of these—sometimes in competition with the local voluntary organizations. I do not want to enlarge upon that, because definite instances have been given already of where that has happened, by my noble friend Lord Monck.

There are others who want a Federation of Youth, and to make it compulsory for all young people to join some organization. If I may deal with that point first, I feel that it is a most retrograde step and not conducive in any way to the best interests of citizenship or democracy. It would completely do away with the value of the volunteering on the part of young people. It would have a lamentable effect if these young people were forced into one or other of the different organizations. If it is not intended to force them into these organizations, I do not know whether these people have in mind the formation of something which we might call a Borstal Club. Heaven forbid! The advocates of this realize that they cannot bring in compulsion at once, because of the lack of buildings and the lack of leaders; but I suggest that, by the time that leaders can be found and buildings can be found or erected, it will be possible by propaganda to see that so few boys are left over that we shall hardly need such a terrible step as the compulsory enrolment of boys remaining outside. This propaganda should be conducted mainly by the use of the very best films which we can produce; and I would ask the Board of Education, in producing films, to take the voluntary organizations into their confidence and to obtain their advice. The propaganda will also be done by the schoolmasters and mistresses, who are naturally most interested in the leisure time of the young people whom they teach, and also by the leaders of the voluntary organizations, who, after the war, will come forward, I am sure, in great numbers, and who will be of a splendid type.

To come back to my former point, I feel that after the war voluntary organizations will find it more and more difficult to get kind people to give them donations and to keep up their subscriptions. Therefore clubs will have to depend more and more on the State. It is, of course, often argued by those who have to find the money that control should go with payment— "He who pays the piper calls the tune." I do not think, however, that the Board, of Education intended this to happen, and they must have foreseen the possibility. I suggest that what they intended to do was to see that grant aid was given, and that all local youth committees should be content to carry out inspection if necessary. It seems to me that the natural course for them to take, if they were dissatisfied, might be temporarily to withhold the grant, but at any rate they should inform the parent body and see whether the cause of the trouble could not be eliminated.

I hope your Lordships and all the voters of Britain will support the voluntary organizations. I feel that no words of mine are necessary to win your approval. I want the help of everyone in the country to make the plan of the Board of Education better known. I should like to give a few extracts from Circular No. 1486, The Service of Youth, which was the original circular: Now, as never before, there is a call for the close association of local education authorities and voluntary bodies in full partnership in a common enterprise: nor need this entail any loss of prestige or individuality on either side. And later it goes on to say: The National Youth Committee will have as its counterpart local youth committees representative of both the local education authority and the voluntary organizations. Later: The Board, therefore, urge that all local education authorities for higher education should now take steps to see that properly constituted youth committees exist in their areas. Suggestions are made in the Appendix to this Circular as to the steps which might be taken to this end. Later again: In all cases it is essential that the secretary should be a person fully acceptable both to the statutory and voluntary bodies. The Appendix mainly sets out how these committees should be constituted. It says that they should as far as possible be representative of all the interests concerned, and that they should have a chairman and vice-chairman, the one appointed by the local education authority and the other coming from the voluntary side. I should like to ask the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, who is going to reply, how many chairmen and vice-chairmen have been appointed from the voluntary side. The committee is to consist of some twenty-four members, or a few more. There are to be two representatives of the principal voluntary organizations, and two representatives chosen by other voluntary youth organizations in the area, making a total of four, or possibly five if we in- clude the chairman or vice-chairman. In addition to the twenty-four, it is laid down that— in order to ensure that free and direct expression may be given to the views of youth, it may be desirable for some representation to be given, by co-optation or otherwise, to young people of both sexes, not necessarily connected with any particular youth organization. I hope that I shall not weary your Lordships too much if I give you a few still briefer extracts from Circular 1516, which is called "The Challenge of Youth." It says: Any attempt at a State-controlled uniformity or regimentation would be both stupid and perilous; more than that, it would be wholly alien to the spirit of this country. The function of the State in this work is to focus and lead the efforts of all engaged in youth welfare; to supplement the resources of existing national organizations without impairing their independence; and to ensure through cooperation that the ground is covered in a way never so far attained. The function of the local education authorities is equally clear and essential. 'They are to take the initiative in their local areas; provide the machinery for local co-operation; encourage existing organizations to extend their work; and fill the gaps not covered by such organizations. There need be no clash between statutory and voluntary effort. The circular further says: But local youth committees must take account of the different types of organization. I must stress the word "must" there, because I understand that elsewhere the fiat has not run from the Board of Education ordering something to be done. Later the circular says: Separate clubs or units.—Separate clubs belonging either to a voluntary body, a church or a works, exist throughout the country. Such clubs regard it as a matter of the first importance that they should work on their own lines and in their own surroundings. With regard to the church clubs I think it is a great pity that the Church has not done more to press on with church clubs, which are of the very greatest value.

I claim a clear partnership, with the right of survival, by which responsible voluntary organizations take an effective part in the consolidation and extension of existing schemes and in the planning of new ones. I always myself feared that voluntary organizations would not get enough representation on the local youth committees. I hope I am wrong, but undoubtedly the proportion of five out of twenty-four or twenty-five is very small. I realize that because of the war the Board of Education's plan may not be functioning 100 per cent. I know there are a few county youth committees which are not following the Board's lead, but I accept the assurance of the President of the Board that the Board are well aware that certain youth committees are not subcommittees of the Education Committee, with their membership confined to members of the local education authority. But in the one case that I have in mind it seems that it operates through six district youth committees, on all of which there is ample representation of the voluntary organizations, as well as other interests such as the churches. The Board say: The arrangement is not one that we like and we intimated as much, with special reference to the voluntary organizations' aspect, in 1940. In a few county areas there has been reluctance to set up a new representative committee in war-time, owing to the difficulties of personnel and travel—indeed the inclination has been to reduce the number of committees functioning in war-time; but, where there is not a representative County Youth Committee, there is always provision through District Youth Committees for the representation of the voluntary organizations and other non-local educational authority interests. All I can say is that I hope that after the war the necessary change will be made.

I hope I have not said anything in my references to local education authorities which might reflect on the teachers. All The teachers cannot be fitted to be leaders. Although a certain number are working hard in order to undertake what must be to them a fresh work, I think we must realize that their work cannot be as good as that done by the leaders in the voluntary organizations. It really needs a very special gift to be such a leaders, and those leaders need a very special form of training. Besides that, I feel that some of the teachers who are teaching all day long must be physically tired and perhaps tired of dealing with the young people under their charge.

In this debate, which has covered so much ground, I think some reference ought to be made to the public schools. I am very fearful of the taking away such valuable institutions, not only for their teaching, but for their character training generally, but their training for good citizenship. I always feel myself that the solution would. be by the provision of more boarding schools, if possible. I hope there will be no political bias in the discussion on such a subject, but we do know that there has been many a man who, though born poor, has by his success at his work, attained a certain amount of wealth, and the first use he has made of that wealth has been to put his own son into one of the public schools My suggestion is that you level up, not level down. I feel sure that all the public schools will meet the situation in the best way possible, and will open their doors as wide as they can.

Another question one does not like to pass over is that of juvenile delinquency. Although that is a problem of youth today, I feel convinced that by education and the better use of leisure the trouble will generally be cured. Another big question which has been referred to in the debate is that of the medical. I hope something will be done to keep young people lit by prevention, rather than by waiting for the cure. I have great hope that something will develop from the Beveridge Report. Finally, do not let people make noble Lords despondent over the position of youth. Their quality is as high to-day as ever it was, and we are having the proof of it every day. No doubt there is room for some improvement, but judged by the success of the A.T.C. and the Cadets, I feel it is only necessary for an ideal to be set before British Youth and that we shall have thereby a better and a stronger democratic society.

THE MINISTER OF ECONOMIC WARFARE (THE EARL OF SELBORNE)

My Lords, we certainly owe the noble Lord, Lord Southwood, a debt of gratitude for having initiated such an interesting and valuable discussion, which has ranged over every conceivable aspect of the Youth Movement, from expectant mothers to old age pensioners. The number of speeches that we have had this afternoon, especially from noble Lords who have themselves played a leading part in the Youth Movement, shows how great is the interest in the subject, and how very widely your Lordships feel that this is one of the most important matters that can engage the attention of His Majesty's Government. I was very glad to hear my noble friend Lord Aberdare say that in his opinion the youth of the country was all right, and indeed after the way in which our young men and women have come forward in the war we must all agree with him. Possibly it was because the Axis thought the youth of this country had become flabby that they issued the challenge to democracy that they did.

I agree so much with my noble friend Lord Southwood in what he said this afternoon that it is rather difficult to follow his speech in detail. I will however endeavour to reply to some of the salient points he mentioned and to deal with some of the important matters mentioned by other noble Lords. We are all agreed that the very best that this country can afford or that experience can teach, or wisdom devise, should be devoted to the service of the rising generation. The noble Lord, Lord Southwood, has drawn attention to certain gaps or deficiencies in the existing services. First, of course, there is the great question of the school-leaving age. As your Lordships know, the school-leaving age was extended by the Act of 1936 to the age of fifteen, but it was provided that that should not come into force until 1939. That, of course, was in turn prevented by the outbreak of war. That Act provided for certain exemptions from its operation. Children could be exempted from its operation if they were going into what was termed "beneficial employment." It seems to my right honourable friend the President of. the Board of Education that public opinion would not now be prepared to accept that exemption, and the intention of my right honourable friend is to make the school-leaving age of fifteen of universal application without exception as soon as possible.

The noble Lord, Lord Southwood, with other noble Lords expressed the view that the age ought to be raised to sixteen. That is a matter on which there is not quite the same unanimity of opinion. There are those who hold that it is very important that boys and girls should be apprenticed to crafts needing skill which can only be acquired at a very early age. There are others to whom employment combined with training is the right normal procedure at that age, or rather, perhaps, it ought to be training that includes employment. That is a matter on which the same unanimity of opinion does not exist; but I would point out that before the school age was raised to sixteen we should have to increase the provision of school buildings very greatly in this country, and not only school buildings, but also the supply of teachers. We should have to provide the right schools, the right teachers, and the right training. Therefore, it is not a step forward that can be spoken of lightly. It would be a very big and difficult advance which would require a great deal of preparation.

Now coming to the content of education, if I may so describe that part of the noble Lord's speech, I was very glad to hear Lord Southwood say that the education of the adolescent must include a preparation for citizenship. He said that in the training of youth we are concerned not only with the mind and the body, but also with the spirit, and he warned your Lordships that we should disregard spiritual values at our peril. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord said. In my view, and in the view of my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Education, the training of the mind without training of the spirit and character, is no education at all. In fact it may be a disaster. We should be sweeping and garnishing the house for the seven devils to enter. The example of Germany, which has already been cited this afternoon, is a glaring lesson to all of us as to what may happen in a pagan and regimented system. The foundation of education, the foundation of healthy youth movements, must be the training of character, and as Christians we must believe, as the most reverend Prelate pointed out, that that can only be done through religion. I believe that that is the belief of Parliament as a whole and of the country as a whole. It is certainly the belief of my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Education, who has devoted so much time to attempting to reconcile the denominational difficulties which have been an impediment to progress in religious education in the past. I am sure your Lordships will wish him every success in his efforts.

Surely this spiritual field is not only the most important of all the fields we are now surveying, but is also the most promising. The young men and women of our country are nothing if they are not idealists, and if you want to enlist their enthusiasm and co-operation, you have got to present them with an ideal. The ideal of religion is the greatest ideal that has ever been offered to mankind. If we present them with the challenge of religion, we shall not fail to excite either their interest or their enthusiasm. We cannot do more than that. No man can impose a religion on another, but we can put it within the chance of all these young people who are beginning to think for themselves. They should have an opportunity to know about religion and to experience religion themselves, and the whole of our youth training should have a religious as opposed to an agnostic background.

The noble Lord, Lord Southwood, also said that one of the great objects of this training must be to enable every individual to develop his own resources and his own personality to the utmost. That applies not only to knowledge and work and profession, but also to health and to leisure. The noble Lord also pointed out that this subject cannot be considered without facing the problem of employment of young people, and he laid it down in his speech that the State must guarantee these young people against unemployment. I entirely agree with the noble Lord when he said that of all the tragedies and evils of unemployment, the unemployment of adolescents is the most tragic and the most evil. I think we are all of us, to whatever Party we belong, determined to do everything that in us lies to avert the recrudescence of that terrible evil of unemployment which so much marred our civilization before the war. But that, as the noble Lord knows, is one of the biggest and most difficult of problems, and it cannot be discussed in detail in a debate like this. I would, however, if I may with great respect, refer the noble Lord, if he is not already familiar with the passages, to some very wise and pertinent remarks made on this subject by the late Commissioner for the Special Areas, Sir Malcolm Stewart, in his Report. Probably my noble friend is familiar with that Report, but I would much like to draw his special attention to it because it deals with some of the problems involved in this aspect of the question.

The noble Lord also spoke of the evils of blind-alley jobs, the dead-end jobs as I think other noble Lords called them. It is impossible to eliminate dead-end jobs. There are same jobs that are very suitable for young people and which do not lead anywhere, and that is where the State ought to step in. It ought, as I think the noble Lord suggested, to seize that time in the young man's and young woman's growth when it is possible to give them an opportunity of preparing themselves for progressive employment, for something that will lead somewhere.

I can only tell my noble friend that the President of the Board of Education and the Minister of Labour are actively working together on this and other allied problems.

Other noble Lords have spoken about vocational training. That, as I think your Lordships know, is a matter which also has its place in the programme of the President of the Board of Education. Our junior technical schools have done a very important work in the past and I think many educationists feel there is room for an extension of their activities. There is at any rate a growing consensus of opinion that in the past our education has tended to be much too bookish and that we were in fact educating thousands upon thousands of bank clerks and typists for whom the labour market had no demand. That could not be regarded as providing employment for the rising generation. Why, for the last thirty years we have been providing unemployment for thousands of these unfortunate people by concentrating education too much in one direction, and swamping that particular field in which there was only a limited demand. I think, therefore, my noble friend will agree that a planned education for youth, a planned training policy in relation to the rest of society, must take into account the broad divisions of fields of employment and opportunities for service that present themselves to mankind, and one of the worst errors that could be made would be to specialize education in such a way that you were producing applicants for the labour market to a greater extent than demand for them existed. I should like to acid that I think the Government recognize that more care must be given to the placing of young people in employment, and that attention must be devoted by industry and commerce to the training of their young employees. Industry must recognize that the early years of the young worker are essentially years of training. This is another of the matters which is actively being pursued by my right honourable friends the President of the Board of Education and the Minister of Labour.

The noble Lord spoke about the health of school children and adolescents. I think we must all agree that the health of young children has improved very greatly in recent years owing to the ex- cellent work that has been done in our schools, but, as has been pointed out this afternoon, there is a lamentable period of gap. That, as your Lordships are aware, is one of the important points dealt with in the Beveridge Report. I think I can assure noble Lords that that is a gap which is likely to be filled. The evil of the gap is fully recognized. Noble Lords, I am glad to say, have paid a tribute to the work of my noble friend the Minister of Food in regard to what he has accomplished in the feeding of school children. I was very glad to hear that his work in this respect is so fully appreciated in your Lordships' House. It really has been a very wonderful and a very noteworthy performance to have practically created a new service in time of war, amid all the difficulties of war, in a country which is being beleaguered and has been beleaguered for three years. This service amid these difficulties has served millions of meals each day to the school children of this country and provided over 3,500,000 children with extra milk. I hope and believe that the feeding of school children has come to stay. I do not think there will be any opponents of the system after the war, and I believe that the whole nation will recognize that that is one of the many things for which we owe a debt of gratitude to my noble friend the Minister of Food.

Reference has also been made to the gap between the school-leaving age and young manhood, the gap between fifteen or sixteen and eighteen years of age. Your Lordships will remember that the late Mr. Fisher, in his Education Act of 1918, contemplated compulsory part-time education up to the end of the age of eighteen. That part of his Act has remained almost a dead letter except in one place, Rugby, and except in the case of certain enlightened firms who have availed themselves of the facilities under that Act of providing education for their youthful employees. I think there is general agreement that what Mr. Fisher failed to achieve is a task which awaits the genius of my right honourable friend, the President of the Board of Education, and I can assure your Lordships that progress in that direction is one of the ambitions nearest to his heart.

A large part of our debate, and I was delighted it was so, was devoted to the voluntary organizations and we have had the advantage of having the assistance, in considering this matter, of noble Lords like Lord Somers, Viscount Monck, Viscount Bridgman and Lord Aberdare, men who have given their own services to the nation in this respect for years past. I think it was the noble Viscount, Lord Monck, who asked whether the Board of Education was a friend of the voluntary organizations. I can answer that question without hesitation and tell him that the answer is most emphatically in the affirmative. I was very glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Southwood, insist more than once on the evil of what he called the regimentation of youth, and other noble Lords have agreed with him. Above all things our youth organizations have not got to be modelled on Hitler's Youth Movement. Liberty, freedom, originality, individuality must be the lifeblood of a free people.

When I say that, I am not saying anything against the plea made by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for military training for young men. That is an entirely different matter. That is a proposition which ought, in my personal view, to be supported for reasons of national security, for reasons of physique and for other reasons, but that would not be part of the youth movement as we think of it in its educational aspect and as we have been discussing it in this debate. There we are in this dilemma, that the more the State does for youth the greater the danger of a uniform State-ridden system which is really going to have a totalitarian influence. That is the very thing we want to avoid. How can that be avoided? it can only be avoided through the voluntary organizations, through the community centres, the youth centres, the clubs, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Guides, the Cadets, the Church Lads Brigade, and organizations of that nature.

The nation owes a great debt of gratitude to men like the noble Lords who have spoken in this debate and others in the country who have provided such splendid leadership in these voluntary organizations. As the most reverend Prelate pointed out in his very weighty speech, the whole thing depends on leadership. You can have the most splendid buildings, the most expensive equipment, the most elaborate paper constitution, but you will not get anywhere unless you have personal leadership and Find the right men and women to come forward and devote time to this work. There is no more important work that any man or woman can do. A great many people cannot do it. It is, as has been said, a question of vocation. But those who have the gift and those who have the opportunity could not possibly do anything more useful. If I may say so, I very heartily agree with the noble Lord, Lord Somers, who suggested that the community as a whole ought to furnish the opportunity to those men who have the gift and have the willingness, and I will certainly bring to the attention of the proper, quarter his most interesting suggestion that extra holidays should be given to civil servants to enable them to take part in such work.

I think I have dealt with nearly all the important points raised by your Lordships in the debate. The noble Viscount, Lord Monck, asked a question about girls' organizations which I fear I am unable o answer, but I endeavour to obtain the information which he requested. Summing up the debate, I think I can say that there never has been a President of the Board of Education who is more enthusiastic than is my right honourable friend in the direction which your Lordships have been considering. He realizes, and the Government realize, the. immense importance of the matter. I can assure your Lordships that it is our aim, as I am sure it is the aim of this House, that in the post-war England that we are all, going to have a hand in building up, we shall do what can be done to provide getter health, better employment, better education, better training for the rising generation, but an education and a training that shall be religious, free, individualistic, worthy of democracy and something totally different to that conceived in a totalitarian State.

LORD SOUTHWOOD

My Lords, there are other Motions on the Paper and therefore I shall not detain you for more than a moment to say that I find it quite impossible to put into words my gratitude to the noble Earl for the full explanation he has given as to the future provision to be made by the Government for the youth of this country. If he can follow out the ideals he has stated to us all will be well. So far as I am concerned I can only say he has put me into entirely new heart. If the Government can do all this the future of this country is safe. Of course we have to recognize that this country has been knocked about a bit in the last few years. It has to be rebuilt and we have to depend on our young people to rebuild it. If the programme that has been stated by the noble Earl can be carried out, or if even three-quarters of it can be carried out, I have no doubt about the future of the nation. I thank the noble Earl and I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.