SIR,—As so much interest has been aroused by the Conservative
Party's Compulsory Youth Scheme, I thought your readers might be interested in a few facts which I have discovered whilst interviewing girls of 16 and 17 years of age under the Registration of Youth plan.
This is an industrial and mining area, and the girls interviewed are for the most part employed in munition, clothing or basket-making factories or at flour mills or concrete-making works. Of the first 175 girls to be interviewed only 22 had at any time attended any kind of evening class, and only t r had ever been attracted to any kind of church guild or youth club after leaving school. Ten of the r75 attended a church or place of worship.
The interview was regarded by the majority with suspicion. Apparently the girls suspected that the interviewing committee were there to get something out of them, and almost invariably began by assuring us that they had little or no leisure time. Few showed any enthusiasm about jrifling a youth organisation, although, apart from the 17 who positively refused to join anything, all were advised to join a youth club or some pre-service training unit. What percentage actually took the advice offered and joined some organisation I have not yet ascertained, except in the case of the Rangers. As a commissioner for Girl Guides, I know that of the 20 who showed a preference for Rangers and promised to attend the weekly meetings only six have in fact done so.
All the girls work long hours, and most of them at dull, routine, dead- end kind of jobs, but most of them have some leisure. Over 60 per cent. of the girls interviewed go to the cinema (or cinema and dance hall) mice a week, and 40 per cent, go three times or more. Very few take any kind of physical exercise or walk or cycle for pleasure, and very few read books of any kind.
Although I am entirely in agreement with Mr. D. G. Pumfrett that it is only by giving the individual freedom to fulfil his responsibilities that we can hope to remain an intelligent and self-respecting nation, I find it difficult to see any solution to the urgent problem presented by the girls about whom I have written unless compulsion is applied in some
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