BRITISH YOUTH

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 6, 6 July 1935, Page 30

BRITISH YOUTH

CHAFED BY TRADITION

NOT REVOLUTIONARY

A SOEEY INHEEITAXCE

I am asked to give you the views of the young people of Great Britain on such questions as unemployment, Communism, Fascism, democracy, political interest in our colleges, religion, pacifism, etc., says a writer in the "Christian Science Monitor." It is no easy task, for Youth, like Age, has many and varied views on most of these questions. Some of us, perhaps a considerable ' majority of . us, resemble our fathers in either not thinking at all or in thinking what convention or the oldest member of the family, thinks we ought to think.

There is iSO little time for the average student to think about anything falling outside his normal studies that it is probably true to say that the great majority of under-graduates have only the most superficial interest in many of these questions.

There are some, I think they are a small but very articular minority, who rather in desperation and open anarchy, rebel against all restrictions and give their allegiance to strange and violent cults. I personally believe that the vast majority of thinking students, and it is for them I have to speak, are by no means so violently revolutionary although they are ill at ease with their present condition.

Man in every age has been to a considerable degree the product, of his environment. In a world in which the future is so uncertain, where a World War has shaken into wild fluidity the old fixities of thought and conduct, the natural scepticism ot youth has run riot. We are bewildered by the conflict of ideas—something of the restlessness of the age has passed into our nature. We cannot accept the old discredited standards of religion and morality, and we have nothing very definite with which to replace them. Science and invention have created a

new world, but they have not changed the nature of man—and we are disturbed by the dangerous discontiguity. ] We search eagerly, almost desperately, for signs of stability,. casting about for the shape of things to come, and in the demoralising uncertainty we are prone to follow any definite lead. This, I feel, is the strength of Fascism, and to some extent of Communism. We realise that perhaps they are imperfect—but faced with unemployment and possible if not probable war, we can see some truth in the old German proverb, "Better an end with terror than a terror without end." On the whole, I"find that we young people feel we have inherited a sorry world and' are little disposed to thank our fathers for their legacy. What is the use of all the progress, of all this education, we ask,' if at the end we have no bread to eat,' no decent clothes to wear, no future to look forward to? We are not surprises that some of our fellows, feeling themselves caught in a purposeless drift, for a moment abandon the struggle and turn to the pleasures b^y which their fathers were encouraged to carry on the ghastly murder of the war some twenty years ago. We do not condemn them, although we are convinced that it is really foolishness. The strictures of our fathers do not trouble us, their wisdom seems to us as- great a folly. DESPEEATELY SIXCERE. Our sincerity, for we are sincere, desperately sincere, has been treated with humiliating condescension; our enthusiasm has been patronised and thwarted by callous indifference or fatalistic conservatism'; our activities have met with suppression more often than with sympathy; 'only our faults have really been taken seriously. We have lost patience with our critics— we are impatient to reform the world in which our fathers appear to be so impotent—we are still enthusiastic, not yet' entirely materialistic, we are determined .to cleave'a way through the chaos and justify our courage and our hope. It has become the fashion to say that youth is irreligious, even anti-religious, and this largely because we prefer to ramble on Sundays and refuse to acknowledge the conventions of traditional respectability. Youth, so far as I can discover, has always in this sense been irreligious, and there seems little historic evidence for the days of packed churches about which we hear so much. But apart from the natural scepticism of youth we modern people are very critical of organised religion. If by religion is meant the softening of the heart, and we believe not infrequently the brain, effected by cheap sophistry and sentimentality, then we are indeed more than sceptics. We are definitely anti-religious. DOES NOT IMPRESS. We think we have seen through clerical pretentiousness, and the piety of a comfortable clergy does not impress us in a world of hard realities. Churchgoing does not appeal to us as a virtue in itself, and its constant and vigorous advocacy seems to spring more from the instinct of self-preservation than from an earnest desire to further the progress of man. We have no patience with frock-coated sanctimony, irrational intolerance, and sectarian bigotry. The modern Church seems to us

little different from the Church of years ago—it is still painfully conservative, at greater pains to preserve its dogmas than to discover truth. The natural scientist rather than the priest has captured our allegiance, for he is both humble and honest and he performs as many miracles. But at heart we—and I speak still for the youth of Great Britain—are still deeply religious. Wa want to be theists, but our God must be concerned with our whole life. He must be interested in economic as well as moral and spiritual matters. His Church must be interested in politics, unemployment, war, and peace. We believe it was such a God that Christ Jesus really preached, and if we have in the bitterness of our disillusionment taken His name lightly, it is not because we have become bankrupt of morals or have lost the love of beauty, truth, and goodness, but rather that we have outgrown the Sunday school mythology of storks and angels and have become cynical towards what we count the hypocritical habits of an organised Church that has sacrificed Truth for dogma and a lower patriotism. LIVES BEFORE US. We have our lives before us and we are more concerned with this world than any world to come. We are not prepared to suffer injustice or to tolerate inequalities here for the sake of reward in the hereafter. We are prepared to suffer for a cause, to die if need be for a better world, but we will not have our loyalty exploited by national, ecclesiastical, or economic interests if we can help it. If the Christian churches could forsake their dogmas for a Christian agnosticism they would gain our support. So long as they teach their children to repeat "I believe . . /' when the children have neither the understanding nor the opportunity to test this teaching; so long as they are deeply concerned over such matters as whether it is right or wrong' for one brand of "Christian" to preach in a cathedral so long will it alienate our sympathy. So long as it concerns itself largely with the "other world" and refuses, as many of us feel it does, to tackle the major problems we shall remain outside its walls; for it is these problems that we feel it is our duty to solve. ' In politics no less than in religion

we' who are called ! the.. youth of Great Britain desire sincerity and honest leadership. ' We cannot understand the modern statesmanship that "outlaws" war and' at the same time increases its . arms estimates. The sanctity of treaties appears to be conditioned by economic advantage. One politician in a recent radio debate admits that he is vitally ' concerned only with his own country's interests. REAL PACIFISTS. We arc real pacifists. We are tired of what seems to us mere talking; tired of commissions to discover (or is it to disguise?)" obvious facts; tired of diplomatic attempts to justify imperialistic aggression, and of all the deep intrigue which masquerades as foreign policy. That security is to be purchased by that nation which has the largest army, navy, and air force appears to us as stupid as it is arithmetically impossible. In the same | way we regard an economic policy which seeks the "favourable balance of trade" an absurd anachronism in an international world. In spite of the bliss of our early training and the selective dishonesty of our history books, we are really internationalists. If. we have shown any^ sympathy towards Fascism it is because we prefer its clear course of action and its determinism. General Hermann Goering in his book "Germany Reborn," referring to the National Socialist violence, says: "If you call that murder, then I am the murderer and I am prepared to take the , consequences." That is the spirit which .attracts youth, rather than tactical manoeuvring to avoid the consequences of unfortunate action and ill-advised legislation. The same spirit underlies the attraction Communism has for our generation. In politics the strength of the Left is 6ften little more than a measure'of the stupidity of the Right. Modern youth is ready for great adventure. We are annoyed at the limitations to enterprise. Measures1 for reform are inadequately conceived. Grants and plans for reconstruction are insignificant compared with our needs. If vested interests block the way to progress and prosperity vested interests must go. If we are to plan then let us plan on a wide scale and with a real determinism. We do not believe that over-production is the cause of our distress. So long as people are in need of essentials such a theory is ludicrous.' We count it immoral that food should be destroyed to maintain price levels, that profits should be made out of wars, that people should starve or dwell in slums, and there is no convention or economic system which we will not destroy if by its destruction we can achieve these reforms. •* These I believe to be the views of the average thinking student in the colleges of England. Indefinite in detail, noble in concept, and at all events not impossible. Under the modern iniquitous but apparently inevitable system of examinations testing erudition rather than intelligence the student is obliged by economic necessity to exercise his mind with the confines of his syllabus—in so far as he tries to think upon these modern problems he finds himself too wise for the thoughts of yesterday— and not wise enough for the problems of tomorrow.