Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-09-21
WHAT'S UP IN THE MINDS
OF THE NEW GENERATION?
Youth and Age Are Eylna Each Other
Critically, Not Only In Britain,
but the World over
WEARS and years ago. when Mr.. Wilson

L was still a glorifed prophet in the land
and when we could think Of the great war
as an end rather than new beginning Of
international tribulution, a poet somewhere
in a trench wrote poem.
He was a young poet. Clearly, he had
not reached the age Of compromises and
temperate judgment.
The ignominy of dirt and cooties and end
less cold and hunger and bloodshed and
automatic obedience to voices of command
seems to have overwhelmed him for a
moment and to have driven him to wild
uttcrancc. In his poem he said that If ever
there was another jolly old world war the
jolly old gentlemen normally responsible for
such things would be plucked from their
plush chairs at home and sent to the jolly
old front to finish it while the youth of the
world stood comfortably aside to do the
cheering.
The extremely unreasonable young poet
was killed But his poem still lives to irri
tate some of the nerves Of the old world.
1t started q good many minds off on crratic
tangents.
In England. now, there is loud discus
sion of what G. X. Chesteron calls the
Conflict Between Youth and Age. This de-
bate RACES in the London Morning Post,
where mystifed parents, encouraged by OBJ
servations delivered in the dePpest chest
tones of which the Post itself is capable, tell
Of the growing insolence, intolerance and
reckcssncss of their children.
Observers-that is. ladies and gentlemen
who write to the papcrs-have discovered
that Youth is not what it used to be. that it
is getting out of hand. developing ways and
PHILOSOPHERS of its own and, in the words
of the cherished British phrase, going a
pace. A debate that has momentarily dis
PEELED interest in the Sim Fein demonstra
tions and the ambitions of the British Labor
party and the disagreements with France
reached a climax when an old gentleman
wrote to say in accents wild that his own
daughter entered her home upon a day to
slap him on the back and call him not Pater
but Old Bean. And it was an ingenue of the
upper middle class who countered with a
passionate letter in which London was in
formed that "a soviet of youth has already
come to some extent and that, within limits,
it is no bad thing
Youthful England, it seems. lire the youth
of a large part of the civilized world is
going in too desperately for jazz and for
latchkeys; for late hours and cigarettes
Shocked parents confess in print that their
sons and daughters have been known to
swear. Moreover, they are cultivating
habits Of insolence and arrogance. They
have an Air. 1t is a new and diSconcerting
Air. suggestive of conscious tolerance and
secrecy, of things known. which, from
motives of charity for an elder world. are
not uttered.
Youth cry the writer's to the London
Post. seems disposed to look down and not
up at its parents, and to be heard and not
seen. The Post mods grave affirmative
1t confesseS that we are come upon strange
and trying days.
Meanwhile. the youth of London is dis.
posed to sncer openly at the anonymous
Moses who writes the leaders for the Post.
The situation Is, as you might say. grave
The elders of the world sit piouSly at home
or in their clubs and their Offices plotting
campaigns of trade or military rivalry They
earnestly sell top hats and cocaine to the
heathPn. They confess that new wars arc,
indeed, a possibility not to be disrcgardcd
They preach intolerance as one Of tho newer
virtues. They admit by every inference
that the affairs of civilization are almost
beyond their control. They call each other
fearful names. And they are gricved be-
cause their conservation TO these tasks does
not inspire in the youth of the world n de.
sire to keep them company and join them
in their great activities
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