Evening star., 1936-04-17

ABE worst crime that the
- older generation has commit
tied against the younger gen.
Il Grafton Is to teach 1t to believe
In the myth Of the good old times"
when the sun always shone. and the
weather was always fine, and money
grew on trees, and everybody was kind
and true, and all the good things in
life were handed one on a silver Salver
It Is one Of the consultations of age
that we look back upon the past
through the rosy mists Of memory that
obscures all that was ugly in it and
that lets us see again only the beauti-
full; that turns the humble cottage we
lived in into a palace. the plain food
we ate into nectar and ambroSia, and
that makes all the hardships we en-
dured nothing but gay adventure.
Such being the case, it is natural
that during these bleak years Of de-
preston we have dwelt with peculiar
fervor upon the glory Of vanished
day, and as we have gathered our
children around our knees we have
enlarged upon its delights and COM
pared it invidiously with the hard
present until it has become the theme
song to which the youngsters have
been reared.
TN reality, even those Of us who dis
coursed most eloquently upon the
good old times" knew that we were
telling a fairy tale, but the trouble
Is that the youngsters believed US.
They have taken all that we have
said about the past for gospel truth.
They actually think there was q golden
era In which the world and all the
conditions of life were different; when
people did not have to work and worry
and struggle and economic just to
make a living: when gilt-edged jobs
were handed to every boy with his col
1ege diploma; when you reached the
top Of the ladder at q single bound
instead of having to crawl up 1t on
your knees, round by round, as you do
now.
It Is this belief in these good old
times" that they missed that has done
more than anything else to break down
the morale of the present generation
and make it bitter and disgruntled
and cowardly and to feel that there is
no use in putting up fight in a world
where somebody else got all the prizes
before they were born.
What the youth Of today needs
more than anything else is to have
this superstition about the good old
times" exploded. To be convinced
that there never were any good old
times: that the road to success has
always been hard shedding and that
the men who have made the grade
have marked 1t with their sweat and
blood. And, most Of all, they need to
be made to realize that men have
always had to work and struggle for
what they got. The plums have always
been gathered by those who had the
grit to climb for them. They have
never dropped into the hands Of the
lazy and shiftless and those who were
too weak to grab for them when they
fell in their reach.
4 Il \ y
T HEAR so much about the good
= old times" from young people who
are victims Of this fable that I am
sick and tired Of. it. Boys and girls
write me that they are desperately in
love, but that you can't marry on
shoestring now as you could in the
past. OF course, they can't, because
now they have to have o splurge we'd
ding and q nice apartment and good
furniture and q car and . radio and
fine clothes and be able to 60 to the
movies and places to dance two or