Our war veterans put many of today's youngsters to shame.

EVERY teenager in this country should be taken to visit the war graves in Belgium and France.

No one can remained unmoved by the sight of the very frail men who fought during the First World War mustering up the strength to place wreaths at the many war memorials in the UK.

Many of these men, who are more than a century old, stood up to show their respects during the two-minute silence this week. This is much more of an effort than many youngsters make to reach for the television remote control from the sofa.

Perhaps if young people were taken to see these war graves they would not be so whingeing, greedy and ungrateful, and would have more respect for their elders.

Mrs Mann and I visited the war graves in Belgium a few years ago, and the horror and scale of the war was brought home. Even more tragic and terribly upsetting is the number of those who were only teenagers when they fell in battle.

Mrs Mann left the cemetery in tears, and since our experience we are both firm believers that today's young people really have no understanding of how fortunate they are to live comfortable, safe lives where money, medical treatment and more importantly of all, freedom, are readily available.

Young people attack and steal from the elderly, they ridicule them, they con their way into old folk's homes and snatch their savings.

I see young men standing on street corners, strutting around using street language as if they are 'hard men'. If they had been in the trenches at 15 or 16, they would be shouting for their mothers as many of the troops did.

Many youngsters, particularly young men, do not even leave the bosom of their families until they are way into their twenties. The thought of them battling for anything except a parking space is almost impossible to conceive.

Mrs Mann said young people are often going on rather pointless foreign exchange visits in an attempt to learn about other cultures. What nonsense. The only education these children get is about what is on sale in shops abroad.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.