YOUTH AND AGE

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 6 August 1919, Page 3

YOUTH AND AGE

ROOM FOR BOTH IN A B3G WORLD

(MelLourr.e Age.)

Before the war that period known as "tne be^t years of a man's l:fo" was dwindling, loutn, with Jt s relentless <-ry, 'Too old at torty/' was pushm-r ax one side; age, on the other side stood firm witn its insistence t-nat no one under tiio thirties was old enough to know anything, between the two there were barely ten good years left in a man's life-. lake mucn "other pecty sJlrste that was brewing in the pot of the twentieth century, the yo-utu and age: eoivtroverey has i>een blown a ,vay by the storm ot war. There is no do^bt tnat a conllict was biewiug. For centuries age had managed to hoid tne upper ground, but it had become vainglorious, re.preesu.ve, and unreasonable i outn was oecommg restive and vindictive, and threatened to revm figuratively speaking, to the lialWof barbarian times, when the old folk were killed off and eaten when they could no longer hew wood or draw water 1 hen came, the war—the opportunity tor both youth and age to put their boasting to the test. What has been the result? Youth has gloriously vindicated itseif. And so ha.^ age. The war has. not proved -that either was wrong. • It has proved that both were right Op- > portunixy had a place for both young men and old men. Youths who in normal times would have been snubbed and kept under were loaded with terrible responsibilities, and earned them easily Old men who were comfortably settled on the shelf climbed down nit© the world again and crammed more service to humanity into their prime. The great lesson of the war has been that it is not years that count. Youth and age are arbitrary terms. There are men of sixty who have only lived thirty years and there are men of twenty who have celebrated their eightieth, birthday. How many an old man whose shaky limbs could hardly raise him from his chair sent hjs spirit out campaigninosent it drilling, marching, fight:ng; ay' and sacrificed its life when some younosoldier fell. w

| We can look in this dead old controversy of youth and age with clearer eves because of the lessons of the war Because youth has learned so much better to trust and respect age and because age has teamed go much better to trust and respect youth," we can point out where mistakes have lain in the past without fear of fanning any flame of bitterness. There are definite and different attributes of youth and age; loth are needed ,in the world, but the question is not which shall overrule the other, but how they will fit and work together for the benefit of both. Age used to base its claim for superiority on the argument of experience. It reasoned that the longer a man lived in the world the more he learned, the more he learned the more he knew, and the1 iiiore he knew the mor© likely was he to be right in his judgments.' As far as appearances go, the argument runs smoothly, but everyone of the premises containsia huge assumption. It is not necessarily true thatj the longer & man lives in the world the more he learn? nor that the more he learns the more he knows, nor that the more he knows the sounder his judgment. If these things were true, it wouid bo possible to place men immediately b y their age. A man of 45 would be wiser than a man of 44 because he was one year older. Ag3 does not predicate wisdom, it predicates only the opportunity to have acquired wisdom. If a man hns not taken advantage of that opportunity he has no right to set up as \vise merely becau&e he is old.

It is the roii&take of thinking that years necessarily bring wisdom that has made the attitude of age to youth all wrong, and has so often stung youth into revolt. One man may leanTmore from the experience of twelve months than another man has learned from the experience of 60 years. Age is apt to forget or ignore the fact that youth has other way^ of arriving at ments. It ha s often a quicker brain, a clearer sight, and a more unbiassed view. But the intolerance of age for the judgments of youth is no harsher than the intolerance of youth for the judgments of age. Deep down in its heart age may remember its own youth and understand. Youth has no old age to remember, and therefore cannot understand the viewpoint of age. Right and wrong appear so clear to the fresh eyes of youth, that it angers hiir, when other people cannot see the same. Yet if he studied hirnsr^-he will find cause for humility. He \>J. probably discover that what he thought when lie was 20 seemed very ridiculous to him when he leached 25. He will find that though every judgment that he makes is confident and final he is always making new ones to take their place.' When he has realised that he himself can grow wiser in twelve, months he will be more prepared to admit the possibility that theie is at least the chance that men who ai-e older than he is are also wiser. .4ge may presume toe much on the theory that years imng wisdom but there is enough in it to make youth more humble- than it is.

What is needed is greater toleration on both sid«s. The day is past when youth will submit to the assumption that it does not know anything and cannot know anything until'it ha,'turn- sed into age. May the day never come v.hen youth, is not willing to traat the judgment of ige with respect, and to be guided by it. An old man would not say to a young man, "Your hack should be bent like mine, your limbs should be shaky, you r hair white, and your eyes rheumy." Why, therefore, should he say, "Your opinions should be the same as mine.'' The opinions of youth cannot be the same as tne opinions ot age because the two are. different stage's of lite, when the whole outlook, the whole purpose of Iking, i s different. Undoubtedly the opinions of youth will change but not because they are wrong, but bel cause the man who was a youth has passed from that stage into' another Other youtlis will now hold the opinions that were his. William Pitt flung the gauntlet of his youth in the face of the House of Commons with these words "The atrocious crime of being a, voun^ man I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny." Twenty years later he stood up in the same place and told th e House that "¥outh is the season of credulity."

Who have done most for the world the old men or the young? Disraeli once wrote, "Almost evervcning. that is great has been done by youth. 3' It is a splendid claim, but, quite untrue I here are great things that only youth can do, but there are also great things that only age, with, the ripe judgment and its trained experience, can do It js the province of youth to peiiorirg onously. It is the, province of a<>-e to plan wisely. If youth tried to run the world, alone this old earth of ours would become a fiery ball 'rushing about the orderly heavens, colliding witlh, -stars If age tried to run the world a^ne. we would become a s cold and as lifeless as the moon. The earth is best run when youth and age combine, each content to play the part for which it is best suited. Stevenson wrote what should have put an end to all discussion long ago, "Age may have one aide but assuredly youth has the. otter There is | nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that boih are wrong."