WAR BABIES COME OF AGE

Evening Star, Issue 22328, 2 May 1936, Page 7

WAR BABIES COME OF AGE

The year is remarkable for the fact that some time during its course the first of the war babies will attain their twenty-first birthdays. They were born with the war taking place practically on the doorstep, and every family in the country was involved: consequently they have grown up with their own peculiar outlook and their own particular handicaps. As I see them (writes F. E. Baily, m the ‘ Daily Mail’), the problem arises almost purely in the case of the hoys—for the girls arc ns good a lot as 1 can remember. it would be absurd to generalise about a whole generation; but making the necessary exceptions 1 have never known such a difficult, temperamental, irritable race as the boy war babies. The befores and afters .are very much alike, except that 1 think boys born after the war ■have more charm because they have been brought up with more freedom, but those horn in the war seem to bo a race apart. The girls, by comparison, are a dogged, hardworking, determined set, who intend to get as much out of life as they can, and do not mind how hard they work in order to do so. They are invariably optimists, whereas the boys are almost invariably pessimists, with a tendency to complain about the conditions of the world as they find them.