THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3148, 18 December 1922, Page 2

THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH.

4By Pilgrim.)

As Robert Louie Stevenson said, life is a festival only to the wise. And he added, with masterly .nsight. that the truly wise are silenced by tacts and stand corrected by a whisper. In dark days when the wisdom of our guides is far to seek, we must bestir ourselves to grasp the facts of life as it is, so that we may would them afresh to our heart's desire. For no one can be satisfied with things as they are. and no one worth his salt ever was st> satisfied. Just as the old Greeks regarded the eternal as the ever-becoming, we must realise that the ever-becoming works through every day. And', would we bear our part in eternal tasks, we should apply ourselves without delay to the achievement of our present duties.

Now this lias always been the disposition of eager youth. In all lands, at all times, the youth that dreams and 1 dares has wrought for better days. Obscurity has but served to intensify its energy. Convinced of its share in ' a world-process that no opposition can stay, it has persevered against the frowns of the old and the hostility of the established, preferring to pass away unrewarded by victory than to win the final defeat of the sluggard. An impulse to range the youth of the nations together in this glorious work of striving for a better order came to a young Dane, Herraod Lannung. He collected a small meeting at Copenhagen last year, and, with the splendid audacity of youth, began an International League of Youth. The second gathering took place recently at Hamburg, when 40 youths of both sexes, drawn from 11 nationalities, applied themselves to thinking out fresh means of summoning their fellows in all lands to their side. And old England was not unrepresented', for two young women from London tinned up, and they have come back with an avenge! of hope. Fbr these young people of the nations have banded themselves l together "for the purpose of combating the .conditions which made' for war, and substituting a world-wide human brotfierhood which would settle its international conflicts by the arbitration of a true League (4 Nations."

The sublime impertinence of this programme is its highest commendation. One can imagine the big-wigs of our present order sniffing with contempt at its pretension. But that is the first step in advance. The contempt of the old is tho opportunity of the young. Not that the benign and gracious oged will so regard this pslendid audacity of youth. They have not forgotten their own youth which mellowed into wisdom just by the power of audacity temepred to the conditions it sought to master and direct. But there is a condition of ago which succeeds in returning to tiselossness while yet fussing with affairs it cannot manage. Such age will spend the last hours sneering at youth in its quest of the ever-becoming. Beyond all praise is this effort of youth to get going. Everybody else is slowing down. If we are to keep moving as a people, youth must take things in hand. It is time they started thinking about it.