The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1917-12-06

Familiarity has its usual fruit of con.
temptuous confidence, and added to all
this, is outwardly, the relaxing of for
mer conventions, and below the surface
the more violent and radical readjust.
ment of mind that is one of the most
striking phenomena of our day.
| The German troops retreating from
Arras blew up the main roads as they
went, to check the allied pursuit. The
! British engineers blew up in their turn
the houses that remained standing near
these craters, and with the debris filled
in the new roadbed. This is hardly an
exaggerated figure for what has happened
in so many minds that the experience
may almost be reckoned universal. II
is time of destruction upon destruction
of bewildering shift of long established
values. Despite the fashion of deriving
kipling's first poem of the war, / doubt
II the world situation has been better
summed up by any writer of prose or
verse than it is in his lines:
Comfort, content, delight,
The ages dear bought gain
Have shrivelled in night.
Only ourselves remain"
We have the feeling that whatever
treasure has been wrought into these
selves of ours we are sure of--and of
that only. Is there one thinking person
who does not realize that we are no more
tranquil and stable than
were Rheims, Arras, Antwerp and the
rest in the summer of 1913? What has
come to them, the next turn of the wheel
may bring to us. The impossible, wheth
er it be foreign invasion or a social
revolution, has ceased to be impossible |
Improbable is the strongest word that |
one dare use nowadays in regard to out |
ward circumstances As the garments of |
life have grown unreal to us its true |
substance has become startingly vivid
and those who are set free to reality |
are free for evil as well as for good In
deed, how many a soul that must endure
forever the hurt of its own misdeeds,
looks back bewildered at the road it has
travelled, wondering and vainly-just
where the way of evil diverged from the
way of good.
We cannot expect our young people to
inalyze their feelings and motives. 1t is
or us to recognize what gives the great
elemental realities OF life to-day a
VI uiStt EilP IMAM Nv" SAioit We
rect this danger? BY warnings Idle
Against what will you warn them? The
fleets of evil doing? The movies have
lone that so thoroughly that they think
hey have no more to learn. And, truly.
here is no evil in the hearts of most of
hem Will you warn them against the
disabilities of these generous ardors and
Ugh enthusiasms that are giving their
fe new thrill and glory? If you do,
GU will be in danger of barring the door
( sympathy between your hard bought
,isdom and their divine folly Remem
er, to that young girl, the boy in khaki
chivalry and martyrdom, to that lad
he commonplace young girl is woman
18th world of tender and sacred dreams
i her touch. There is only one way that
e elders can help them meet their prob
m, and that is by understanding it and
lem as they understand neither it nor
lemselves And we must keep our
nowledge in our own hearts, not by din
ing it into the ears that do not recog
ze their need of it, We cannot clear
leir way of pitfalls, but we can walk =
with them, step by step, ignoring
othing, despising nothing that is i'm
,rtant in their eyes-youth more than
re is the day of small things patient
atchful, and above all, understanding
mpanions. II