The Youth of Britain.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 18004, 26 April 1930, Page 13 (Supplement)

The Youth of Britain.

A PERPLEXING MYSTERY WHAT OF THE FUTURE.

(I-leary Leach.in Chambers’ Journal.)

THE unique Italian exhibition at Burlington House sets the question whether youth has ever before been so much incited to the betterment of itself, the improvement of its finer nature, its culture, as in this immediate age. Music, art and letters are expanded free before it for its inspiration and encouragement as never before. In commerce also, bad as the times may lie, paths of romantic adventure are open now to youth as not to age, which must tread warily. Yet visitors to the Academy, when the Spanish and Dutcli pictures were exhibited, Saw Little of Masculine Youth among them—more, indeed, to be fair, of the feminine. The young males were most commonly seen in their sporting suits and the manner of such as performed a duty by compulsion. They did not understand, nor tried to understand, and were plainly impatient for the open air again, their acrid cigarettes, and their ‘sport.’ Their frequent boredom was not disguised. A friend has called to express some views of his most vehemently. He belongs to the last' generation of gentlemen and sportsmen. He is a distinguished man, who in his time has been foremost in the councils of our greatest games, and has led teams of players to 'distant places. lie tells me he has had one of the most painful experiences of his life. For some reason he was induced to visit an athletic meeting where all the competitors were women, attired in scanty athletic costume, affording them full freedom, for their roughness. Not this, or this alone, accounted for his displeasure. The Spectators were Mainly Young Men who applauded languidly, and at the end drove off in their expensive cars. Our informant described this scene as ‘revolting,’ and no comment upon his observation is desirable. Discussions with the bank managers, the economic experts, the heads of businesses, and the fathers of families, as to whence comes the money that the young people with the ‘sports’ and other cars spend so prodigally in the restaurants and other public places, working little or not at all—hating work- —yet apparently enjoying no -great family resources from which to draw by allowances and gifts, lead to no definite result or conclusion, hut from them emerge a number of illuminating points, which, singly or in combinations, may supply an answer in many cases. It is said that the ‘resources,’ whatever form they may take, vary with the prodigal, and that youth in the hulk has not discovered any special and infallible way of living expensively without any means and doing no work. They would describe them as “sportsmen,” and a feature of their daily doings is Attending Cocktail Parties. A manager said the mystery was at least as perplexing to himself as to others, since he knew of young men with only the slenderest bank accounts or none at ail, their families having little enough to spare, who comported themselves like the sons of millionaires, without the sense and effort that millionaires, usually demand in their children. An explanation, very interesting and suggestive, is that in these latter years, when in other classes of society crime and fraud and other offences with material gain for their object have enormously increased, and the General Moral Standard in business and social life has fallen sadly, a really large section of youth, indisposed towards serious work or unable to obtain it, with no future prospects, has cultivated the science of living on its wits as a few of its elders used to do. Cunning and skilful is youth in this-new endeavour, manoeuvring in a field where responsibility and the moral standard are low, and its efforts enjoy good opportunity. The atmosphere of ihe night clubs, and even dog-racing places, perhaps the racecourse—though usually this is the preserve of the older hands —perhaps some of the more flashy golf clubs, the environs of Throgmorton Street, the semi-fashionable restaurants, and the loitering places of the West End, is very helpful. These are good places for Ihe production of money or its equivalent from nothing, by the process of borrowing without repaying, of giving worthless cheques, of stimulating

among other parties the diposition to make presents to them, of pretending bogus agencies, of Pinching a Little Here and There, of cadging, and of something worse. A smart and “sporting” appearance is maintained, a bold and a brazen manner, such as will enable a young man with a pound in his ppeket to add others to it after spending freely all the day. The hire system, with all its new extensions and ramifications, is also considered a component of this mystery. When it is pointed out that this seems to be an affair of London, but could not so easily explain Edinburgh or Manchester, it is answered that the spirit and skill are both spreading things. At last one is told that ebullient youth is after all in harmony with the period, and that, despite all political and other endeavours, the cold conviction is now established, though not admitted save in thought and whispers, that the problem of our unemployed is insoluble under existing conditions, for there are at least half a million too many workers or would-be workers in this country who could never he employed. This and the doles have An Unsuspected Influence. on many features of our national life. . . And in optimism one soliloquises that none of this may be half so bad as what it seems. Compassion. We should be kind and sympathetic, quite indulgent, we are told, towards the young and happy people who vaunt their prodigality, since they have few to counsel them to higher things. They were children during the war, when it was the worst time ever to be children. They have grown up with the impression that it is the best of ail things to be a “sportsman,” though sport has lost its old fair meaning. Amid its distress our country prides itself upon its sport, though there is less real honest sport in.it than there has been for a hundred years. This consolation is grotesque, and its influence, extending to shameful exhibitions of many kinds, is desperately harmful. It is in Ihe “sporting spirit” that university students commit their foolish and despicable rags, as to which we agree that every known gross offender should be birched and sent to -gaol. Foreign people are amazed at them. When Oxford beat Cambridge at rugby this season, half the team consisted of Rhodes scholars from the dominions—a Startling and Fearful Circumstance. That night the students went through London ragging and spoiling people’s pleasure. They prevented performances at theatres, and climbed on to the stage. An American actress who suffered said, “We don’t have rows like this in America after our football games.” But youth has none to tell it seriously of its faults, and thinks that its sporting complex is good enough. It has not only lost a guiding and restraining parentage, but has sustained the equally disastrous loss of the stimulating influence of nice women. The feminist movement in its advanced stage Ims reacted terribly against the young men of this country. They have Lost the Old Ideals of Youth. They have forgotten the national heroes, ancient aud modern. Ask the sportsmen at a cocktail party or a university rag who was Captain Robert Falcon Scott, and what he did, and when and how. -Scald their conscience with the last few lines that Scolt in his lonely tremendous glory, dying, wrote, saluting youth . . . All this’ stuff is just what we are told Perhaps, as optimists, we should consider it exaggeration, or even nonsense. We should make allowances. We should be indulgent. Spring is coming, and the Australian cricketers; and this will be, so it is declared, one of the greatest sporting seasons ever known, with some splendid fights in the Albert Hall. We arc Optimists. We should be merry. The Government could then take pride upon us. Yet a word—in optimism: The future of our great country, in such fearful doubt, depends not upon Mr Ramsay MacDonald or Mr Snowden, or Mr Baldwin, or Mr Lloyd George. It does not depend upon the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Governor of the Bank of England. It does not depend upon G.B.S. or Mr Wells It does not depend upon old fogeys- like ourselves, with our indulgence and optimism. It depends entirc’y upon the youth of Britain now.