THE POST-WAR GENERATION
SIR,—I am a woman in the 'fifties and belong to about the same genera- tion as Mr. Nicolson and certainly, alas, to the generation which Miss Langford Dent condemns. My husband spent most of the four years 1914-1918 fighting in France and was three times wounded. He worked unceasingly for the League of Nations Union between the wars only to have his son of twenty lose his leg in the last war. The women who were young with me were most serious-minded, albeit they appeared cheerful and gay, and I cannot believe their gaiety thoughtless.
In my youth I blamed the Victorians for the unhappiness of the First World War. Now my generation is held responsible for the last. May I, at the risk of seeming priggish, hope that the years have taught me a certain charity. I have every sympathy with the young: life is not easy for them. I hope I have learnt that it is useless to blame previous generations. We ourselves are bound to make mistakes, not perhaps of the same kind, but just as reprehensible, and one of the mistakes we all tend to make when young is to think that only those are right who are as uncomfortable as ourselves.—I am, yours faithfully,
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