The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1932. POST-WAR YOUTH.

Evening Star, Issue 21285, 14 December 1932, Page 8

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1932. POST-WAR YOUTH.

It is interesting, and not too soon, that an attempt is to be made to “ document” the war-time baby. So many statements have been hazarded about his disadvantages and their fruits that some more systematised study of the product would seem called for. Already observations have been made, according to a cable message, which suggest sharp modification of some judgments that have been expressed with too little regard for small differences of age. It is better, we are told, to have been born in war time than either directly before or after it. The youth whose life began in that exciting period will generally be taller and stronger than were his immediate seniors and smarter than both those and his immediate juniors. Why his eyesight should bo worse suggests a nice problem for specialists. But we must doubt if those observations have been so general or scientific as to warrant any great faith in their conclusions. An English paper has been studying modern youth vicariously through the eyes of various shrewd and eminent observers, oldsters for the most part, invited by it to record their impressions. The judgments are too contradictory to provide any sure conclusion, but suggestive things were said by all the contributors. Lord Birkenhead, who is in his twenty-sixth year, thinks that generally speaking modern vouth are inefficient, politically and artistically, and that their manners have gravely declined since the days when their parents were young. He is particularly sarcastic at the expense of the new novelists and the now poets. “I suppose that there has,never been a more sterile period in literary production.” Abuse is declared to bo the life blood of a fairly numerous school, which “ docs not even understand the technique of abuse,” .Mr Osbert Sit-

’.veil’s satire, for example, is pronounced to have “ about as much bite as a man of ninety.” We are asked if there is one man under thirty who is assured of a really brilliant political career, and of manners it is declared that “ the average young man in London to-day is a clod and a bore. Most of them have vile manners—none of them graceful manners. All you can say of them is that they work hard.” Mr John Buchan, with thirty more years to teach tolerance, makes a much better case for his juniors. Literary cliques and coteries, he points out, are not specially modern; “decadence” was almost the hall-mark of the ’nineties. It may be doubted whether the generations really differ so very much in the proportion of early brilliance that they produce. Mr Buchan, Dame Edith Lyttelton, and Mr Nowell Smith (late head master of Sherborne School) all seem to agree that “ youth of to-day, while more outspoken, more free and easy in manners, has just the same varieties of grace and awkwardness as ever it had.” Mr Henry AV. Nevinson, who writes as a veteran, does well in pointing out that, “ like a bright young warrior in Homer, each generation boasts itself much better than its fathers, and that is only natural, for otherwise the generations would die of discouragement. Why should they live if they could show no improvement? ” Whether there is much difference in practical morality between this and the Victorian age he thinks it is hard to discover. Nor can lie learn who are the heroes and leaders of this generation. As soon as they arise they are outdated. •. His youthful contemporaries seem to him to be “ rather arid, rather barren, rather timid, youngish people, pitiably heedful of ‘ Safety First,’ and mindful that to-morrow we die,” But Mr Buchan will not have this for a moment, and neither will Dame Lyttelton. The evidence on the other side, so far at least as physical adventure is concerned, is tremendous. Dame Lyttelton is awed by the task before youth. "So much has been destroyed; not merely the material of wealth and ease and security, but the much subtler and more fundamental material of thought, standard, and tradition. . . . The ideas of humanity have to be refashioned and reintegrated, and it is the young who must do this. What Mr Nevinson brutally calls their aridity and timidity is, 1 think, rather their courage and anxiety.” And so half a dozen opinions on the youth of to-day only reflect the differences with which they are viewed. Recording and documenting by “ a number of educational authorities ’’ may provide more certain conclusions on some developments. That process, however, will have least value for the imponderables which are most important, and, in regard to characteristics that are more easily classified, there is a terrible saying that “ nothing lies like statistics.”