THE ART OF ABDICATION.
YOUTH is a fault which, though it is sure to mend, ago does not always find it easy to forgive. To many mature men and women it is true that the attraction of youth is irresistible. Not only do its energy and gaiety and hope fill them with delight ; its very discontent, its inconsequent rebellion and ephemeral despair, warm their hearts and fill them with tender indulgence. " Like as a father pitieth his children," said the Hebrew poet, as he tried to express his conception of the attitude of God to man. The poets all love youth, and in their attitude there is some Divinity. All natural men and women feel towards children something of this tender excuse, but with adolescence the attitude of the older world becomes critical, and between youth and age there arises a barrier, disguise the fact as we may. At this moment we think the barrier is more conspicuous than usual, though very great efforts have been made to obliterate it. Across it the generations discuss life and exchange words of tenderness or reproach. For the time being the crowd on both sides are working together with one aim, but not always in perfect harmony, not often in complete accord. The older men and women, who had a right to rest, or at least to do the less arduous part of the daily task, and to do it within limits at their own time, have come back to bear the burden and heat of the day, and they are perforce yoked with the very young, those even who at-short year ago were still considered too young to do much but play. All together now put their shoulders to the wheel. But if you are young you may put your shoulder to the wheel, but you cannot put an old head on it ; and the same thing is true, in an opposite sense, of the old. They still have faith in the old specifics for the cure of the world. The young have made a fresh diagnosis. They flout experience and turn a deaf ear to citations of precedent.
We talk glibly nowad lye about the lengthening of youth which has taken place. We have talked of it till we believe in it. In reality youth was always as long—and as short—as it is now. Custom has changed a little, that is all. Shakespeare seems always to have regarded the dividing-line between the young and the old as being very marked. We are inclined to think that in times of great transition this line is accentuated. Great as was the move forward in Shakespeare's day, we doubt whether any such change can be traced to have occurred then as is now going on under our eyes. Even if we put aside the whole business of the war, which of itself must in a measure divide old men and young, the march of education has in the lower classes left the fathers far behind the sons. We heard the other day of an able and distinguished officer who is now fighting in France, and who fought in the Boer War. He declared the type of British private soldier to be utterly changed since then, and entirely for the better. Intellectually and morally he is a new man, and far ahead of his prototype of fifteen years age. The officer gave the credit quite frankly where he believed it due—
to the schoolmasters. It is impossible but that friction should be generated by this change. The men stand on different levels. and their outlook cannot be the same. It is like putting two social classes suddenly upon an equality. The mutual criticism is bound to be somewhat fierce. This want of sympathy is perhaps less noticeable among men who have been educated in the same manner as their fathers. Indeed, th • present writer is inclined to believe that one of the few good arguments in favour of a stereotyped system of education is that it does keep the generations together.
But the spirit of great times is too strong even for the Public School system, and the young men de, to a great extent, talk a new language.
Among educated women the change has been far more rapid. At the present moment there is real friction between the young and the old. The young women have taken it into their heads, not
only that customs and conventions are mutable, but that human nature is mutable also. Any middle-aged woman who is so fortunate
as to obtain the confidence of young women will say, we believe.
that many of them deeply regret what seems to them the want of faith in the old. It is impossible but that when co-operative work is undertaken the experienced workman should bear rule, and to-day, while the desire to serve is a hundredfold stronger than in the past, reproof is resented among young subordinates and the assumption of authority rouses discontent. At the same time.
how often do we hear older women lament neglect by the young. and complain that, though not literally banished from their counsels, they are as much set aside as in America. A few women well endowed with tenderness and humour do not much mind. They smile to their contemporaries, and invite thorn to " look " at the vagaries going on around them, as they did fifteen years ago, when the tall young women, asserting their independence, were children in the nursery, amusing their parents and guardians by their deter-.
mination to do as they liked. Not even the harshest young person could be cruel to such women as these. Indeed, kind young people are wonderfully gentle and encouraging to their seniors, though many are apt to " dismiss " them from their intimacy—setting them aside and suggesting that they should occupy themselves with their own little affairs, as those elders once set aside their children when they wished to engage in " grown-up " and unsuitable talk.
There are women who take this change of manners exceedingly badly, and among them are some who seem really to have conceived a dislike to their young sisters. Among unmarried women we should say the middle-aged might be divided into spinsters who adore the young, for whom everything about them, from personal charm to want of judgment, is attractive, and those to whom all these things are an offence. They would like, if they could, to force the young into old moulds, and their fruitless effort renders them cross and breathless. There is a sense in which faith and experience must always be at variance, and experience will always grudge to faith its dynamic power. Married women, we may add, are not wholly free of this harsh feeling of resentment against the young. Here jealousy cornea in. Abdication is hard, and women as they grow older must be content to see fresh inferiors preferred before them. and to know that the siege which the new generation is laying to their citadel must be very soon successful.
Older men are often very unsympathetic with boys, but we think that they feel—in the professional class at least—less bitterness than old women often show towards girls. Nature has made an old man's lot happier than an old woman's. Some opprobrium still adheres to the latter term, while the word " elder " is a word full of deference. For men in high place the romance of ambition begins very late indeed. The heads of the professions are all getting old. The fact that Europe is governed by old men has some obvious disadvantages, but it does have a far-reaching and beneficent effect upon the spirits of those who are beginning to sigh for the loss of their youth. How delightful if there were some new romance to be looked for after fifty, as even a remote possibility ! But for women it is not so. All the more are they wise if they root out of thole hearts this unworthy feeling towards youth. When once a woman is past her prime, if she refuses to take delight in watching the young world going its own way she will have little to delight in. Half the art of life is the art of abdication.
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