A “Morning After” Generation

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXI, Issue 2781, 28 November 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

A “Morning After” Generation

The young men and women of to-day are placed amid the debris of the war, and out of that debris their task is to build a better world.

The phrase has somewhat dubious associations. The morning-after feeling is familiar to friends who have on the previous evening been merry tggether. It is by tradition specially applicable to those who, as accessory to their mirth, looked on the wine when it was red. Happily, in these days morning-after reflections are decreasingly bacchanalian. The debutante who rapturously enjoyed her first formal dance that she had been anticipating for months, the aspirant artist who played before a crowded and obviously delighted house in such cases there need be nothing but gladness and thankfulness the morning after. But in current usuage the connotation of the words is sinister. There is a suggestion of remorse for the debauch of the previous night and of reluctance to face the obligations of the new day. The morning-after feeling may take a wider sweep. When men wake to the fact that the heyday of their youth has passed, and remember how many of its years were mis-spent, their emotions are apt to bear some resemblance to those of the morning after. Corresponding experiences may befall. nations. There have been historical periods in which mighty emperors have given unbridled rein to their passions. They have permitted themselves and their people to surge into outbursts of conquest and of cruelty. Satiety brought no satisfaction; surfeit induced disgust. The nation experienced the bitterness of morning-after disillusionment. Possibly something of the same culpability, if not the same enormity, attaches to those who belong to the older section of the present generation. Certainly some sympathy is due to the generation that is younger. The condition of this world, by the time they became conscious of it and of their presence in it, was distinctly hectic. Seventeen years ago the war was raging; the older generation by its foolishness or its recklessness made a night of it. To those who are now in early manhood or early womanhood everything around them is suggestive of the morning after. In the spheres of thought and of action, in the worlds of idealism and realism, conditions have become sadly messed up. The prewar world was a prim cosmos, ana men turned it into a tumultuous chaos. We would seem to have earned the censure of our children. Even if we do not receive it we deserve it. If we receive it, a spirit of meek acceptance is appropriate. Probably the supreme irony of the Great War is that, despite the splendid heroism and selfsacrifice which glorified it, no one is prepared to accept any shred of responsibility for it. Never before have so many books been written after any war by those prominently identified with it. On this occasion statesmen and generals galore have felt it obligatory to write volumes in order to explain that, whoever might have been to blame for errors in policy or in strategy, they were blameless. Young men in millions were mown down; the whole civilised world is impoverished, and still feels imperilled. Yet no one pleads guilty, and each protests innocence. Such is the world in which our sons and daughters find themselves. For them it is indeed the morning after. It is natural for youth to face life with something like holiday blitheness. There is nothing in the present-day situation to foster that spirit. ' Boys and girls leave school eager to engage in the battle of life. Meantime they are being grievously discouraged by the fact that there is no place for them in the

fighting line. Last year in New Zealand thousands of the youth of this Dominion quitted school, anxious to obtain positions. Comparatively few did. Hundreds returned to school for another year, and these will help to swell the regular quota due to emerge in a few weeks. They are educationally dressed up, but they have nowhere to go. Even when there is no immediate occupational problem the outlook on life is bound to be bewildering to the young. are placed amid the debris of the war, and out of that debris their task is to construct a better world. While they are engaged in that process of construction their seniors might well be temperate in their criticism, for the young people of to-day are b«ing tossed about on tidal waves of fantastic theories by which their parents were never disturbed. The watertight-com-partment old world has gone; no nation now liveth for itself alone. In central, Africa the tribal life is breaking up; in civilised Europe the harsh edges of intensive nationalism are being smoothed down. To-day the younger people realise to an extent their 1 fathers never did that their national existence is very largely dependent on the mechanism of civilisation working in all parts of the world with smoothness and with security. There are proofs enough in Europe’s recent financial history There is always much in the philosophy and activity of Youth at which Age may justly smile. The youthful are apt to be opinionated; they are prone to think the elderly timid and dull-witted. The youthful are, of course, wrong; but, remembering the morning-after condition of the world to-day, the elderly of this generation would do well to hold their tongue. When they enter the grey years men tend to increase in width, but they do not necessarily increase in wisdom. It is simply not true that as men grow old they grow more tolerant; their disposition rather is to become more trustful of, more boastful of, their own judgment. _ In every generation that judgment inclines to be. critical of youth. It- should not be so in this. The fact of the morning after disqualifies us from delivering admonitory lectures. For a long time to come the young are likely to be engaged in tidying up the muddle their predecessors made. / There are few things in which the young find greater delight than in discovering new approaches to old paths. The elderly know that the old paths will again emerge, but let them not deny youth the joy of believing that humanity has never gone the way before. Life has heights and depths the youthful have never scaled or sounded. By the time they have done so those they now deem elderly will be given lavish post-mortem credit for their wisdom. Meantime the young will continue to revel, as they have always done, in optimism. They are strong in the faith that they are about to usher in the millennium. By all means let them. Even if they are pretty certain to fail, let us by all means encourage them.