BOYS WILL BE DEVILS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 57, 25 May 1942, Page 6

BOYS WILL BE DEVILS

FOLLIES OF HOT AND REBELLIOUS YOUTH "Tempered by understanding and tolerance, the exuberance of the adolescent flows naturally into the conservatism of mature years." Thus: the editor of the "Rotarian" somewhat sententiously presents this article by M. Maprois* The sentiment is true enough. We all recall the mad foolery of the medical students during their oldtime shivoos in the public streets; their vociferations and their songs which startled the city's echoes. Yet those same rowdies would, we knew, be sedate, staid/ and sober medical practitioners in a year or so, the very pink of propriety. A • A «| "What has happened to you?" I asked. Her eyes were full of tears. "My own son frightens me," she said. "He is violent, extreme, aggressive. Hisi political opinions are brutal; his judgments on love are cynical. "What I call propriety, politeness, is in his eyes contemptible convention. He talks constantly of overturning society, of eliminating: the old generations, of making war on sentiments. He disparages women, whom, however, he wishes to emancipate. "When I think of the child with blond curls, so affectionate, so timid, which he was only yesterday, I cannot understand what has so suddenly transformed him. That puts me in despair." "What has suddenly transformed him?" I said. "Why, that is quite simply adolescence. Your son, my dear friend, is of the age of cynicism? That is: because he is not yet of the age of love. He wants to overturn societfyi? That is because he is not yet of the age of reform and because he will not, for a long time, arrive at the age of resignation.

"Attorney Maurice Garcon, pleading the other day tor a student who had revolted, told that in 1883 the students of the Louis,' le Grand School barricaded themselves in the dormitories because they were protesting against the severity of their lieadmastei. The disciplinary council had to dismiss a student of loose morals, Philippi, who, of all the leadeis, had shown himself the most relentless. This. Philippi, expelled, continued to work alone as best he could and succeeded' finally in entering the Normal School. "Do you know what became" of him?" Why should I know." He bacame a headmaster, dear friend, for it is natural for man to cfafend at the age of 50 the public order which he had disturbed at 20. . . . 'Each age has its passions and its philosophy,. During the Revolution of 1830, the aged Rougefc de Lisle, the man' who composed 'The Marseillaise' formerly a rebellious officer and author of a revolutionary hymn, but who had become very conservative in grooving old, was leaning over, worried, at the window of his apartment to observe the street in delirium. "Suddenly he turned back towards his family, also gathered at the window, all looking very serious. "'Well,' they asked him, 'what do you see? What do ypu hear?' "'lt is, going badly,' Rouget de Lisle said gravely. ... 'It is going badly! They are singing 'The Marseillaise." ' "That is a tragic story." "It is a natural story. Nothing can make the old man reason like the adolescent. But what would become of an adolescent who, from youth, reasoned already like an old man. I' have often quoted to you this' saying of one of my masters: 'If a young man is not an anarchist at the age of l(j, he will not have enough energy left at the age of 20 to make a fire chief!' " "You think, then, that I ought to rejoice at finding my son running wild?" "I think you ought to rejoice ill I hiding your son normal." "Just the same," she persisted, "I should very much like to know who put these ideas in his head." "Don't try," I told her. "The wind scatters grains of pollen by the thousands, and nearly all the flowers are fertilised. Only to that need j r ou give heed." | i

WHY IS SEA WATER SALT?

The water of the sea is derived l'rom rain that has at some time or other fallen on the earth. Rain falling on land percolates through the soil and porous rock, and dissolves away the 1 chemicals therein. Much of this water eventually limls its way into the streamsi and rivers and so to the sea, where the salt and other chemicals are retained. The amount of salt varies in different oceans. There is; about :i per ccnt in the water of the North Sea and the Atlantic, and up to 4 per ccnt in the Mediterranean. At the other end of the scale the Baltic has about one to two per cent. The Dead Sea contains about 20 to 25 per cent of salts. It has been sought to calculate the age of the earth's first or oldest rocks from the amount of salt or sodium chloride in the oceans, and a figure of 200 million years has been suggested.