Modern Youth :
A Summing Up
. .
By NOWELL SMITII (late Head master of Sherborne School). ANYONE reading the four articles under this title in the last four numbers of this paper will probably have soon come to the conclusion -that there is no con- clusion to be reached on so elusive. a subject, Lord Birkenhead finds the modern young man inefficient and ill-mannered, " a clod and a bore." He does not mind showing, himself . drunk before women ; and they are rather amused than disgusted. (This by the way is almost the only reference to women in the three male contributions to this symposium ; Dame Edith Lyttelton alone. writes of youth in the common gender.) He inveighs with hereditary gusto against " the corrosive influence of impressionism," the futility of vers litre and the adolescent autobiographical novel. He is impressed by " the insufferable pomposity of most of the young politicians " he knows—if he were older he would recog- nize this, at least, as no peculiarity of modern youth. Eager, debonair young men almost always catch the characteristic pomposity of statesmen as soon as they go into politics., . Colonel John Buchan has no difficulty in showing that Lord Birkenhead is generalizing from too narrow a survey. Literary cliques and coteries are not. specially, modern. " Decadence " was almost the hall-mark of. the 'nineties, just when Lord Birkenhead's father and Sir John Simon and _Mr. Churchill in law and politics, Wells, Belloc, Chesterton, Buchan (naturally overlooked bythe .writer), and others in literature, were startling the World . with their youthful brilliance. It may be doubted whether the generations really differ so very much in the propor- tion of early brilliance that they produce.. Like Colonel Buchan, I have an innate prejudice in favour of the 'seventies for birthdays ; and of course 1l notice that the 'seventies of the eighteenth century produced Brougham and Canning as well as Wordsworth and Coleridge and, number of others who, Whatever we may think of their later performances, were beyond doubt brilliant young sparks before they were thirty. As to manners, we older people are necessarily in a position to judge whether Lord Birkenhead is right in saying that " the manners of modem young men have gravely declined since the days when their parents were young " ; and those of us who have lived much in personal intercourse with the young will mostly agree with Colonel Buchan and with what is implied in Dame Edith Lyttelton's article, that youth of to-day while more outspoken, more free.and-easy in manners (a trait which surely they have picked up in the usual way by imitation of their elders), has just the same varieties of grace and awkwardness as ever it had.
Mr. Ncvinson seems to have taken the bit between his teeth and run off to that jolly country " the Victorian Age " for a gallop. He has witty and wise things to say on the subject, and seeing how long the cliché lasts one cannot say that they are out of date. But if we are talking of present-day youth, its fathers and mothers were. for the most part more Edwardian than Victorian. In so far as the youngsters of to-day are scornful of the Victorian age, they have learnt the attitude from their parents and teachers, middle-aged folk, as Lytton Strachey would be if he were alive. And .Dame Edith Lyttelton: seems justified in . suggesting that the " rather arid, rather barren, rather timid, -youngish people," whom Mr. Nevinson regards with the rather contemptuous pity of a born. Crusader, are already a little too old for the class under discussion.. .
Nothing could he. more perspicacious or more sympathetic than...Dame. Edith Lyttelton's own ,contri- bution. . She secs and states clearly the conditions under which the young to-day. have to face the task of steering their own Jives. As MF, , Nevinson .says, " the . mid- Victorian . Darwinian method transformed the whole conception of history, and even of ordinary conduct"! The transformation only became practically effective by degrees. The process has been tremendously accelerated in the life-time of our modern youth both by the march of science and by the upheaval of which the Great War was only one, though enormous, explosion. For the youth of the social milieu of which we are obviously thinking, it is probably the economic depression of the last few years that, directly or indirectly, has mainly set them thinking. But when once they begin to think—as Dame Edith Lyttelton says, " so much has been destroyed, not merely the material of wealth and ease and security; but the much subtler and more fundamental material of thought, standard and tradition. . . . Everything is in question—religion, love, conduct, ideal." What wonder. if some of their youthful reactions seem gauche and even alarming to elders who hope that their familiar conven- tions and illusions will last their time ? But it is the strength of youth that it comes to all these questions fresh and undismayed.
Though the first contributor to this discussion is a young man, it is probable that the majority of those who read these articles are no longer " so young as all that." But in fact the passing of youth is a very gradual and a very variable process. Round about seventeen or eighteen the child becomes a youth, and the change is immense. Youth becomes conscious of life, is full of appetite for life, seeks outlets for its powers, is bewildered by the kaleidoscopic character of experience, is surprised, impatient, sometimes enraged, by the apparent stupidity of thwarting persons and conventions. In a few years the majority of_youths of both sexes under social and economic pressure find their level—and lose their youth. Pauci Otos aequus atnavit Jupiter, and yet thank Heaven ! not so very few, retain " the vigour and courage and infectious enthusiasm " of youth past the dangerous age of thirty, and, if so, probably for life. More would do so, more will do so, the more sympathy and thoughtfulness is applied to the guidance of youth. Dame Edith Lyttelton very wisely points out that the " arrogance " of youth (a failing which is especially liable to rnd in disillusionment) is fostered by two opposite faults of their elders,: a foolish worship and a nagging habit of making comparisons. Youth is naturally both impatient and unsuspicious. It is courageous, yet easily daunted. It resents criticism, especially when, as usually happens, the grounds of the criticism are not explained—often not explicable. But it craves guidance, and shows its gratitude for sympathy by asking, albeit unconsciously, for more. It responds to unselfish leadership by quickly learning to shoulder responsibility, and so passes to the maturity of manhood or womanhood :
" The reason firm, the temperate will, • Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill ; ; ; a And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light."
It is absurd to suppose that youth can either do the duties of maturity or repair its failures. It has to grow up. It would be a miserable world if we were really all useless after twenty-five or thirty. We have plenty of jobs, and one of them is to give youth the best chance we can of really becoming better than its parents.
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