YOUTH BEHAVIOUR

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 24825, 23 February 1944, Page 3

YOUTH BEHAVIOUR

BEITISH AND AMERICAN PLEA FOR UNDERSTANDING This article was written for the Manchester Guardian by Dr. Margaret Mead, a leading American social anthropologist and author of "Coming-of-Ace in Samoa" and other books.

The history of the world has often turned upon some accident of first contact between peoples, whether a missionary, a trader, or a soldier first sets foot on the benches of the new land. In much the same decisive fashion future relationships between American people and the people of Britain are being shaped by the accident that it is many thousands of young unmarried American men who are representing America in British countries to-day, while an equal number of young British girls may be responsible for the most poignant memories which those young Americans take back across the seas. Upon whether the American's overready tongue earns him a frosty rebuke, a too sudden surrender, or a hint that be had bettor talk to father may well depend the international attitudes of whole townfuls of people back in America. It is a. little staggering to realise that so much depends upon the ability of young, sometimes little-schooled boys and girls to keep their beads, to learn to understand and trust each other. They will need all the help that can bo given them if they are not to find the task too perplexing and muddle it altogether. For British girls have been brought up to an entirely different code of manners, to be shy where the American girl is selfassured, and, if onco the protecting magic hedge of shyness and reserve is pierced, to become more sweet.lv compliant than American girls would be.

American Boys Not Shy American boys, accustomed all their lives to the presence of girls, going to school with girls and most often to a school taught by women teachers, are not shy in the presence of girls, even girls several years younger than they are. Where a British boy may possibly find his tongue under the encouragement of some girl,three or four years his senior, but will become tongue-tied and embarrassed when faced by a girl of J6 or 17, an American boy prefers the girl younger than he, a.s he wants to astound and to dazzle for an evening before he starts to disoover and be discovered perhaps for a lifetime. Then, again, British boys and girls seem to pay very little attention to each other until they are ready for serious courtship. Until it is time really to look about for someone to marry boys go about with boys rather than with girls. But in American social life, with co-education and many more places where young people meet, there are several years of lighthearted, pay companionship between boys and girls, companionship which 110 one takes seriously, which isn't meant to result in anything more than a pleasant evening, what Americans call a "date." A "date" is quite a different sort of thing from an evening spent with someone whom one hopes to mnrrv. "Date" with a Girl

It exists for itself, just an evening in time, in which two people dance or go to the cinema, of soft drinks together while they talk to each other in a gay, wise-cracking style, the metaphors and similes changing almost every week.

An important thing about the girl you have a date with —in America—is that she should he a very popular girl. To have spent a whole evening with an unpopular girl is really a waste of time, a confession of failure. A boy may later marry an unpopular girl; he may decide that he prefers the kind of girl who looks up to him because he, and he alone, has singled her out, but he won't have dates with an unpopular girl. Nor will a girl, if she can help it, have dates with an unpopular boy. A good part of any date is spent in proving to each other that the date was a good idea that each one, the boy and the girl, is really popular. They prove this, however, by exactly opposite behaviour, the boy by boldly demanding innumerable favours, the girl by refusing any favours at all. If the boy should fail to bid for a hundred kisses this would prove that_ he had a low opinion of himself, but if the girl gives him one kiss she thereby proves that she has a low opinion of herself, that she isn't quite sure that if he had not booked the evening somebody else would have done so. Taken Too Seriously

All this is very clear and well understood in America. But what happens when American boys meet British girls who are totally unprepared for their self-assured, loquacious manners? A boy who thinks in terms of dates meets a girl who thinks in terms of much deeper and more permanent relationships. A boy who has been accustomed to making a hundred advances only to have them skilfully parried meets a girl who has never been trained to meet any advances at all, a girl who expects to respond some day shyly to some British boy's "Let's dance," a girl who seems grown up to an American —for his own "kid sister" has dates but would be regarded as nothing but a child by her own brother The boy who expects the yirl with a smile and a casual nod finds a girl who, once "the first shyness is over, takes him far more seriously than he expected. Only if these differences are understood so that American boys learn to mute their style to a doner conformity with British manners, and British girls learn what fun there can he in an evening of dancing and talking, an evening that leads nowhere but is a pleasant end in itself, will the contrast in manners be reduced and international understanding correspondingly advanced. What British Girls Should Learn While in the halls of Ministries censors delete and statesmen plan their speeches with an eye to public opinion in the other country, patiently seeking to build up mutual trust and respect, the next 20 years of Anglo-American co-operation in building a world society may be determined by boyish voices shouting the phrases which made sense at home and by girls responding as they were bred to respond under .normal circumstances.

Manners may he more decisive than tariffs, and it may he more important than the deliberations of statesmen that American hoys should merge a little into the quieter social pattern qf life in Britain and yet maintain their spontaneity, while British girls learn to deal with the light and yet highly-patterned "youth behaviour'' of life in America. AFTER HITLER'S DEFEAT AIR POWER FOR PACIFIC WASHINGTON. Jan. 27 A visiting representative of Britain's Royal Navy, Admiral Percy Noble, in a radio interview with the American near-Admiral Francis S. Low, Assis-tant-Chief of Staff of the United States Fleet, declared: "When Hitler is beaten, together our fliers will blanket the Pacific until To jo joins the Germans in unconditional surrender." Admiral Noble, who heads the British Admiralty Delegation in Washington and is a member of the Anglo-Ameri-can Combined Chiefs of Staff, said that one advantage of training British fliers in the United States is that "when our men finish their training they are closer to'the Pacific.'" He gave Ameri-can-built auxiliary carriers and carrierbased planes, some of whieh have gone to the British Navy under lend-lease, ureat credit, for the reduction of sinkings by U-boats in the Atlantic in HM.'i. He added: "Whatever else you can call Hitler, none would call him a sailor!"

"Our navies," he said, "now agree to operate their carriers together when necessary, which means groups of British fliers might find themselves on an American carrier or vice versa."