Under Thirty Page
SAFETY FIRST ?
By HILDA M. CARMICHAEL
[The writer, whose age is 26, is a graduate of Glasgow University, and is teaching in a country school in the north of Slotlandi I N introducing this series of articles the Editor of The Spectator, while agreeing that climbing mountains is not the sole test of the adventurous spirit, seems none-the- less to suggest that it is best displayed in a violent breaking away from the commonplace in life. There is surely more to it than that. If it is admitted that many young men and women are cut off from the excitement of travel and physical daring by economic and other obvious hindrances, it follows that similar obstacles will prevent them from breaking loose from the safe, dull jobs which they would only too gladly abandon—if they could. Not everyone under thirty is a free agent. Some are married, many have relatives depending on them, others are lacking in physical health, and others still have been denied the training which their true vocation demands. What would be the sense of advising a grocer's assistant who left school at fourteen to become a doctor and give his personality scope ? Is it likely that the typist who supports a widowed mother will walk out of the office one fine morning because she knows she will be happier as a nurse ? There are thousands of young people today who are tied to dull, uncongenial work from which they cannot escape. Does it follow that they are lacking in the spirit of adventure ? To my mind they are as free to live in that spirit as any of their contemporaries who cross the Sahara on a bicycle or sail a kayak in the Polar seas.
Indeed, while exploits in the mountains and record-breaking dashes through the clouds are an obvious denial of the doctrine of Safety First, I very much doubt if they have any more positive quality. The spirit of adventure has sadly degenerated if all it involves is a risk to life and limb. If that were all, any reckless youth cornering at fifty in his sports car would qmlify- as an adventurer, but we still reserve that term for those who risked death for sowe4finite end— increase of knowledge, or the enrichment pr-themselves or their fellows. The Elizabethan seamen faced death con- stantly, but not merely for the sake of a thrill as do many of our speed-kings and record-breakers. To them the risk was only incidental, and their tradition is carried on in our own day by those scientists, airmen and others who willingly take their lives in their hands for the advancement or the preservation of mankind. There is a certain section of modern youth, however, which seems to find virtue. in the risk itself. But these men and women are not representative of the under thirties. They are a kind of bang-over from the preceding generation: In their expeditions from Korea to the Caucasus, in their attempts to climb higher or move faster than other people they are indulging in a sort of escapism. No one can completely blind himself to the desperate state of the world today, but he can stick his head in the Sand in one way or another. Risk, speed, travel are all methods of keeping one's mind off the dangerous follies which imperil humanity. Another way out is to go to the pictures. , Such escape tactics, however, are spiritually quite valueless. We are citizens of a world which may, at any moment, blow up beneath our feet. Young people cannot marry and settle down_ with that assurance of security and continuity which blessed their grand-parents. Within a year, teachers and bank-clerks may be ,flight-lieutenants or gaoled pacifists or bloody fragments in a bomber's woke. And even if war never comes, we have seen too much uncertainty in our years of growth to feel that the future can eves be secure. Unemployment has been a bitter fact in so many homes that those who grew to maturity in the years of depression can never really believe that life for them will be safe and settled. Their fear and uncertainty may be almost unconscious,, but it is there all the same. . . This, then, is the background against which we younger men and women have to set our lives. If we adopt the escapist doctrine in any of its forms, we can walk about with our eyes closed until at last we trip over reality. But if we reject such phantasy, what have we left ? Must those who are the slaves of circumstance bitterly submit to their labour and grow old in chafing resentment ? No. It is never the monotony of a man's work that drives him to despair and suicide. It is the poverty of his outlook or the sickness in his soul. The great spirit, the conscious spirit, will find no room too narrow. And from the recognition of that, I think, comes the genuine adventure of living. As leisure increases, it becomes more and more unlikely that a man will be so crushed by his labour that he will have no time left for the adventure of thought, of added knowledge, of awareness of life. Conscious living, in this generation, is an adventure in itself; but more than that, it is a duty to humanity. So many of our fellows have submitted to mental gagging and spiritual intoxication that it is incumbent upon us others to remain sober and aware in a world of somnambulists and madmen. The greatest sin of which we, in this land and generation, can be guilty, is willing self-deception, though we can escape it only by an open-eyed expectation of the worst that life can offer—loss of work, loss of health, bombs, gas and death. It is no tranquil student's life that we must embrace. More is at stake than our private peace of mind. Honesty of thought and truth itself have been suffocated in Europe. It must not happen here.
What is demanded, then, is a steadfast search for truth and a determination to reject the lie even in its most beguiling form—in advertisements, in the Press, at the cinema, and in puffs upon any subject and from any source.. Then, if action does come—as we often feel it 'midst—we shall welcome it unmoVed; not swept away by propaganda, not duped by mass- emotionalism, but understanding how this has come upon us and accepting our due share of the guilt. Certainly our knowledge will be limited. But still we shall be able to guess whether we are dying for our country or for the benefit Of the armament firms. This may seem small consolation in the last extremity, but that extremity will be the further off with each man and woman who dedicates himself to conscious life and truth. Lies and distrust are the actively germinating seeds of war now growing to maturity under the dictatorships of Europe and Asia. None the less, in a great part of the world men are still at liberty to seek the truth. It is upon those who are yet free that the burden of responsi- bility tests. Public opinion in the democracies can still do much in little ways. So, while half the under-thirty genera- tion is sitting on the mountain-tops or wandering in search of self-fulfilment, the other.half can point out distortions of fact to its M.P.s and to its newspapers. It can make use of boycott, strikes and personal influence. Perhaps it can save the other half—and with it, the whole world. But if not, it at least can leave
"not gladly but with harsh disdain a world toe strong in folly for the bliss of dreams."
• If we survive, we shall have built for our children a heritage of freedom which will serve them well when sanity returns to the world. And if we perish—surely some rumour of our integrity will remain to trouble the pagan night. Despite their outward indifference to religion few of our generation would now utterly deny that the "soul is less than nothing, lost, unless in this life it can build a bridge to life eternal."
We may give that a hundred different meanings, but in any interpretation lies an acceptance of the fact that the future lies with us.
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