When you consider, though, the frustration of a long-term member like Don Pemberton of the Wagga Rotary Club, which started the Book Fair project, "it makes you wonder about the human race, about where we live", with the motives of those 26 Army Sappers 71 years previously, you wonder how some of our young people today lose their way.

Giving the address at the Kapooka ceremony last Saturday, two days after the arson attack, Major Robert Bailey, said: "Today we look to values such as courage, initiative, respect and teamwork". Those qualities, he inferred, were projected by those 26 Sappers "who answered a call, as did many others, to action largely unknown".

"They have, and will always show us the true meaning of the things we value, perhaps by other names such as pride, mateship and commitment. Putting aside their home lives they saw a greater need; and resolutely put themselves to the task."

What a shame the "halfwits ... acting under the coward's cloak of darkness", as The DA's editorial described the perpetrators of the Book Fair fire, didn't possess the purpose of self discipline to indulge their endeavours as those young Sappers (average age 23) did and the Rotary Club members and others in service clubs do each and every day for the community's benefit.

Which begs the question how Australian society generally, and Wagga in particular, can end the "pointless destruction" - as the Book Fair's founder, Rotarian Gerry Page, described the arson attack.

According to the Keep Australia Beautiful organisation earlier this year it put the annual cost of criminal vandalism at $2.7 billion; it is a difficult figure to accurately assess because many acts are not reported.

Over time readers of the column searching for answers about youth diversion to crime, have suggested a lack of discipline within homes and schools as the root cause of their behaviour.

Many have suggested forms of national service, much tougher penalties by judges and magistrates and more detention institutions for frequent offenders, ideas that politicians, sadly, frequently reject because of cost.

Which reminds me of a reader's observation about the late Graham Kennedy, rugby league international and former principal of St Michaels regional high school at Wagga who answered a parent's question about school discipline thus: "We teach self-discipline here - that means, shirt tucked in, socks pulled up, shoes polished".

Simple but no doubt a necessary step to installing self-pride but it also raises the willingness and preparedness of authorities to further explore forms of national service and proven organisations like the Police Citizens Youth Club movement.

Efforts currently are being made to broaden and provide more facilities for Wagga's PCYC. Readers are reminded it was a huge donation by Wagga Leagues Club that enabled the current building in Gurwood Streetto be constructed and opened by the mayor, Ivan Jack, in June, 1963.

Half a century on is it not feasible for the community to again sense the need to provide an enlarged facility to stimulate young people to improve their society not wreck it?