[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Surely the most distressing feature of the " Under Thirty " articles and resulting correspondence is the lack of sympathy shown by the elderly critics to their juniors, and not the pessimistic attitude, lack of courage and vision, &c., of which these juniors are so scornfully accused.
These young people have written with a frank sincerity of their deepest fears and feelings, and an older generation, psychologically incapable of such self-examination, rebukes them with all the outworn shibboleths of their day.
Most of these critics seem, in their misunderstanding, to overlook three important points.
00 Young people today—or at any rate, the best of them— want to know the truth and to understand the worst. This most praiseworthy and courageous attitude often leads them, in their youthful earnestness, to believe that things are worse than they really are. It is obvious from the letters of their critics that they will recover from this failing as they grow older.
(2) Because they write pessimistically, it certainly does not follow that they are not living courageous and useful lives. They probably are—and deserve all the more credit for doing so, after having tried to face the facts.
(3) Elderly people like Mr. Angus Watson who can look back with satisfaction on a useful life, well lived, see things so very differently from those who are starting. Never before in the history of our country has everyone, male or female, felt the odds to be so heavily against any of them, or their children, being able to complete the full course of their lives, and the feeling is not conducive to facile optimism.
It is all very well to say, as Mr. Angus Watson does, that we are suffering the birth-pangs of a new civilisation, but birth- pangs are very painful things, which make even the bravest cry out. The " under thirty " generation who think and feel realise that life is likely to be a fairly grim affair and they propose to meet it without any illusions on that score. There are few Julian Grenfells among them.
It is a pity that those who have grown up in easier times, or who have used their powers of feeling and thought less intensely, should so hopelessly misunderstand these young people, whose courage is not less because it takes a modern form.—Faithfully
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