The New York herald., 1922-04-16

II T Is not without fear and trem-
bling that we approach the
subject Of modern youth. Every
week during the past two years at
least Eas witnessed new Daniel come
to udgment-usually an elderly Dan
iel, grown reminiscent of his past
youth and moved to compare that
past youth with the modern repro
bate. 1t is not quite a. square deal
for the old folk to have a monopoly
on all the criticism of youthful de-
generacy. 1t was high time for a
voice to be heard, coming not from
the scoffer on the side lines, but from
the great student body itself, at which
these shots of criticism have been
fired. These are ugly things that
they are saying of us. We have been
called roues and vampires. We have
been accused of superfciality, ma
terialism, ENTHUSIASTICALLY, every
condemnatory epithet in the diction-
ary has been applied to us. We want
to raise our feeble voice to protest
against the great body of unjust criti-
cism that is being aimed against us.
and to suggest. perhaps, wherein tho
root of the whole trouble lies.
Do not, at the outset, misunder-
stand our position. Having been grad
uated from great State university
of the West, studying at present in
another great school in the East, we
are fully aware of the fact that there
is an alarming number of girls in
high school and college of the bobbed,
berouged, blase and bored society
queen type. We deplore this fact.
But we do hold that even as there are
great numbers of these, there is also
in our schools to-day, larger num-
ber than ever before, of thoughtful,
earnest, ideaistic students who are
seeking to make their lives count in
serving their day and generation. 1t
is gross unfairness to say the vam-
pire-ish group is typical of modern
girlhood when the opposite group is
so large.
Two Great Classes OF students.
Those who have been in student
work, and have had opportunities to
visit schools during the past two years
are saying unanimously that where
as before the war there was a great
body of students who were neither
very good nor very bad, neither very
brilliant, nor very dull-to-day such a
group is very small, and that now for
the most part there are two great
classes into which the student body
is divided-the extremely thoughtless,
and the extremely thoughtful. The
information reaches us that in one
great university last year more stu
dents were expelled because of ill-con-
duct and scholastic failure than ever
before-yet in that same school there
were more excellent scholars enrolled
that year than at any previous time
of the schools history. We can name
another great school where two and
half years ago there were in the
entire student body of nearly eight
thousand, three student volunteers
(those who intended to enter for
eign missionary work.. At the end
of last year in the same school
there were nearly forty such students,
and the number is about the same this
year. We noticed in Y. w. c. A. work
in college last year that while the
number of "flapperish flappers" was
appalling. we never had had SO many
active. earnest workers.
Four years ago little school was
started under unauspicious circum-
stances in an Eastern city, to train
students of college grade for leader
ship in church work. To-day there
are four hundred students enrolled in
that school. and the number will be
much greater, by a hundred or more,
next year according to applications
now being received by the school. In
Boston University alone, of its $500
students, more than thousand are
preparing to spend their entire lives
in religious service. home and foreign.
Is the present generation so degen-
crate?
Herofnes as Well as vamps.
We have seen.-have lived with
"eighteen-year-o vamps" to whom
college is a "suc cession of house par
ties;" we have been living also with
eighteen-year-old heroines who have
gone through unbelievable struggles
to get a college education. To these
college is a serious preparation for
life. and life is very real and very
earnest We have worked side by