10 JULY 1964, Page 16

A TASK FOR YOUTH SIR, — With reference to the letter from

Mr. Anthony Steen, I would like, as an individual member of the LCC Welfare Committee, to give my wholehearted support to his effort to rouse the nation's conscience to the plight of the lonely old people.

However conscientiously a local authority may carry out its statutory obligations to care for the old people, loneliness of the kind Mr. Steen refers to can only be alleviated by voluntary effort. History may one day regard our neglect of this problem in the same light as we now regard the plight of the children Lord Shaftesbury rescued from the darkness of the mines in the nineteenth century.

What finer task could be found for our young people?

MONTAGU LOWRY-CORRY