"THEY KNOW ALL"

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 95, 19 October 1931, Page 5

"THEY KNOW ALL"

THE MODEBN SPIEIT

FLAMING YOUTH'S FREEDOM

DREAD OF BEING ALONE

There are at least six points of view from -which to approach almost any question; consequently "the modern spirit" is tho subject of many varying judgments. Elderly critics move iv tho fear that age .brings bias. Young champions luxuriate in the youthful sense of infallibility. Never the twain shall meet! Was Mr. 11. G. Wells biased against being, biased Avhen, as an elder, ho said optimistically the other day that in Europe and America more people on. the average aro in happy and comfortable, circumstances than ever before in the world's history? Mr. Hugh Walpolo in the September "Fortnightly" quotes Wells without comment. At the. same time Walpole sketches his own picture of tho commercialisation of tho English village and the English countryside. COMPLACENT COWARDLY PARENTS. "Coining down the road into Raliel, where twenty years ago, in perfect stillness, tho trees threw their shade and in the rising fields tho cows lazily flapped their tails, now, like a flea, I must hop for my life to escape two cars and three motor-bicycles. I count lour garages, two petrol stations, and one large publio urinal. . .. . Ten years ago to bathe on a Sunday in Eafiel was godless. Do I not remember watching, as I read my books ou the cliff side, old Ezekiel Mark approach a pair of careless bathers who, their shirts flapping about their bare knees, were forced to listen to a quarter-of-an-hour's lecture on their Godlessiiess! And this morning, even as tbc bell is ringing for morning service, four young ladies have but just emerged from their lodging, brilliant in red and yellow pyjamas, smoking cigarettes, and carrying a portable radiosett .-. . In the space of a night, the new generation in England has eaten, completely and finally, of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and of Evil. They know all, far, far more than any cinema can teach or show them. All the old restraints are gone—no hope, of Heaven, no fear of Hell, no terror of Parents, no nightmare of Poverty. There is; Modern Science (scraps of it are all they need); there is tho modern Parent (complacent, cowardly, bewildered); there is the Dole. In Kafiel at this moment thero are a number of young ladies, most elegantly attired and. with perfect manners, who serve languidly in the tea-shops during, the summer and eagerly relapse upon the Dole as soon as the winter months are come. England is covered, as though by' a golden mist, with this moving, shouting, laughing, devil-may-care population." ~.#'• But is there Jightning lurking behind that golden mist? ROSY PAST NOT ALL ROSES. In comparing the new commercialised Tillage. with the old village and .its Tose-coveied cottages, Walpole is scrupulously fair. He shows that the old quiet exterior1 hid many social sores. "That same rose-covered cottage ■ was damp, insanitary, and indecently overcrowded." The young people 'raised in itLwere not.very nioral, and oven twenty years ago its overcrowded occupants wore in rebellion against the grand lady of the village when she entered with jellies and comforts for a sick child. "Get out of here," shrieked the mother of the sick, child, ."with :your haughty ways and your condescending airs. We've no room for you and no room for nothing. No room, no-room,-no room!" .: Arid therein is perhaps the gonesis of the new freedom—a cramped-people demanding room, room, room, at any cost! ■A-fow years pass, and. now' Raflel sees such freedom as it never saw be* fore, along with' vulgarity. "They scatter their orange pcfel . . . laugh at cranks and prophets and scaremongers, and detest with all their hearts the tranced silence • that cornea with half-an-hour's aloneness." A CHANGE IN THE TIDE This, modern lack, of any primer of •elf-entertainment —this dread of being alone—has grieved Walpole the dreamer. Yet he is optimist enough to see a turn of the tide. "Slowly, slowly (often among the youngest generation of all) a passion for silenco is beginning to be born ... a surprising number of grave-faced contemplative boys and girls. Their fathers and mothers had the licence; themselves are beginning to work out a new Code. God is coming back into favour again. . . . Down the Pass comes a band of 'hikers,' barekneed, bare-necked, with staves and pack like the Pilgrims of old. They walk silently, sniffing tho brilliant air, watching tbo stream lap the boulders at' their feot. . . . Twenty years ago i'ey would have crowded the town street, loafing, cat-calling, wondering when the 'Public' would be ready for them." But now they have "the look of men discovering a now world. . . ;. England is not destroyed; jthe loveliness isnot consumed —and we are moving, into a new world. of surpassing Wonder.".