A TASK FOR YOUTH SIR,—I write as one who has
for fifty years dealt with young people and with the aged, and it is from the experience I have gained in both fields that I write in support of the magnificent work done by Mr. Anthony Steen and his youthful collaborators who have created this new movement in which the young help the old.
When, some four years ago, I handed over to Mr. Steen a small group of teenage boys and girls, members of one of the clubs in this settlement, who were willing to do some regular voluntary service for old people, both my late husband, Sir Basil Hen- riques, and I felt that this might bring a solution to the instability of the older adolescents, as well as being a help and comfort to the aged; but we were doubtful whether the scheme would grow beyond our own walls.
These doubts are now dispelled, for I have watched the phenomenal development of the crusade which has now reached the stage when it can no longer function and expand without adequate long-tertn financial help and administrative aid from govern- mental and other sources.
The imagination of youth has been fired. It only for good that lies in our young people of today, and allow it not only to expand itself for the benefit of those who can no longer care for themselves, but to give them individually and collectively a sense of dedicated achievement. needs the wherewithal to permit every city and town in this country to harness the tremendous potential I know full well that the hearts of the vast majority Of the Mods, the Rockers, the Teddy boys, can beat With equal sympathy for the old as do those of the less demonstrative young people of this country, and that, given the assurance that their help is needed by the old, and welcomed by their contemporaries, they Will gladly exchange the cosh for the paint brush. and rush on their motor scooters to the side streets and tenements where the Old and lonely live, taking their girl friends on the pillion seats, to clean and mend and paint and bring friendship to those whose eyes light up when they arrive.
The new experience of serving the frail instead of being served in some roadside café can bring with it a realisation that they do not need the prestige. value of a leather jacket to show that they are 'someone.'
My generation has left a war-threatened world with a lowered standard of moral values in which the corning generation has to live. Steen's Army' not only combats social evils but it puts back into the nation a way of life which can well set the tone for the world and restore the waste places.
St. George's Jewish Settlement, El
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