WAR AND THE OLD MEN
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,--In his admirable defence in last week's Spectator to the charge that the Old Men were responsible for the War, Mr. St. John Ervine makes one thing quite clear to me, and that is that he is not very fond of young men, and particularly those who emanate from Oxford and Cambridge.
Some time ago Mr. St. John Ervine tried, in the columns of the Observer, to saddle Oxford with the responsibility for the prevalence of a horrid emasculate pronunciation of the English language employed by waitresses in tea shops, and by the more ".refained " of our Suburbans. We at Oxford regarded this as a gross libel .in no way approaching the truth, and I am sure that most university men will condemn the present charge for being equally without foundation.
That a great many of us approach the world in a critical spirit is only natural ; for it would be most unhealthy in us to regard with complacency the blood and horror of the War, and the chaos caused by labour troubles. Yet to say that we blame, en bloc, our elders, and whine miserably to anyone who will listen, of our young lives blighted by the War, is preposterous. Plays of the type objected to by Mr. St. John Ervine appeal very little to the young university man of to-day. Their bookshelves alone testify to their admiration of the works of such elderly gentlemen as Mr. Shaw and Mr. Galsworthy. No ! Such plays as The Fanatics appeal to quite a different public—a public which revels in the spectacle of an immaculate young hero, who, having been disturbed in the embraces of a half-naked chorus girl, rails against his father for being the cause of his own and the world's ills.
I suggest that this public talks with the accent that Mr.
St. John Ervine has attributed to Oxford !—I am, Sir, &c.,
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