Operation 21 view attacked

Sir, Allow me to comment, point by point, on your "Operation 21" editorial.

Firstly. I did not expect some students would be impressed with the "Operation 21" pamphlet because it was not writ ten in the theoretical or scholarly manner that would appeal to the intellectually superior being. What we must remember is that the pamphlet was intended to be read by all young people in New Zealand and fortunately only a small proportion of this group consists of the cynical student or English critic.

Secondly, I fall to see how the primary aim of "Operation 21"— to inform on the problems of hunger and under-development— cannot meet with the approval of students; after all it is we who continually demand that the public be informed on international problems. Furthermore the very fact that many of our fellowmen are starving and suffering diseases of malnutrition should arouse in every self-proclaimed humanitarian student the urge to do something to help rectify this situation.

Of course, the pamphlet does not definitely outline what we can do, for it was never intended to dictate our individual line of action, or answer such questions as those you posed. For once we young people have been asked to think for ourselves (students will be in their element here) and it is up to us to devise ways of providing answers to these questions.

While we sit back and criticize all attempts at finding solutions to such problems as hunger, other, more practical, non-student members of our age group are, at the community level, making worthwhile contributions to realize the alms of "Operation 21." By failing to respond to the challenge ourselves we will only reassure other sections of society that the student community's concern for social justice is nothing more than a hypocritical facade.

Keith Lees