CRABBING LIFE FOR THE YOUNG

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 9, 2 March 1925, Page 56

CRABBING LIFE FOR THE YOUNG

DO MODERN NOVELISTS DESTROY OUR YOUTH'S ILLUSIONS ? A GIRL'S PROTEST

Is it Idealism § TT is realism, they may say; but is it? Are those depraved and cynical people we are invited to read about in books in any way typical of the people most of us are accustomed to meet every day of our lives? Many girls go to books for a knowledge of life, and if the men and women they read about resemble those they may expect to meet in their journey through the world, then, indeed, their pilgrimage will be a sad one. Our "realistic" writers can't hurt the older people, but they are crabbing life for every girl who believes in a knight, none the less a knight because he may work in a City office and ride a bicycle instead of a horse. The world was full of knights in 1914. Is there any proof that the young men who came back were so inferior to their comrades who died? And it is not the men only. Does Mr. Galsworthy really believe his heroine in Saint's Progress to be typical of her age and class? Does he really believe that such things happened and were permissible because it was war time, and the lovers were to be parted, perhaps for ever? As if it were not a thousand times more reason for keeping their love the purest thing on earth. "I have known there was wickedness in the world since I was 17," the girl who had once read Galsworthy said to me. "But I thought it was the exception, so it didn't really affect my happiness. Then I started reading novels, and every one was worse than the last. In the end I didn't think there were any decent men in the world." ofpare the Innocent T HAVE mentioned Mr. Galsworthy in particular because I, too, loved Villa Rube in and A Knight, but he would have no power to hurt us if there were not all the others, Mr. Wells, Mr. Arnold Bennett, Mr. Compton Mackenzie — worst of —the women writers, who are destroying the House of Life for the girls. Have Miss May Sinclair and Storm Jameson and the rest forgotten the days when they could have been hurt as they are hurting girls now? Presumably there is a public for these books and plays since they continue to be written, but they are crabbing life for the young, and the young of this generation have suffered enough at the hands of the old. Ladies and gentlemen of the Pen. if you must write such books as these, write them about wicked people, and leave the young and innocent alone. If you have outlived your illusions, for the sake of things , you once believed in leave a few shreds to the young. Is it so much to ask that you should leave the girls their Prince Charming, the young men their innocent Princess?

TT is the young who suffer most at the hands of the modern novelist and playwright. If one has lived long enough to form one's own opinion of the world, one may yet be able to read modern novels without seeing the world through the novelist's eyes, or accepting his assumption that all men and most women are vile. But if one is standing, somewhat nervously, on the brink of life, it is another matter. I write from the girl's point of view, but I do not imagine that the young men of to-day are any more

grateful to the gifted people who are breaking their idols. "I used to adore Galsworthy," a girl said to me the other day, "when I read Villa Rube in and A Knight. Then I read Beyond, and someone took me to The Skin Game. I haven't touched a book of his since." What a tragedy that such an art should be used in this way! Have writers any idea of the effect they are producing on young people when they paint human nature in such sombre colours? What a dark and sinister world they are revealing to those on its threshold!