Evening Post. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1929. MUCH ADO ABOUT—WHAT?

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 138, 7 December 1929, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1929. MUCH ADO ABOUT—WHAT?

Do the reading of sexual mailers, and the sophistication it brings, injure the young girl and young man of the new generation? This is not exactly the question which "An Elder Critic" sets out to answer in a recent essay in "The Spectator" on "Youth," but it is one of the questions that arise in the course of his inquiries, and it is one of the fairly definite issues on which the "Elder Critic" and the younger writer who replies to him appear to agree. First, let the elder speak: Wo can but caso an anxious breast by reflecting that many of the young women whose reading makes oui- hair stand on end do seem to drink in the deadly stuff without much hurt, and retain the "modest eyes and clean hearts" which we imagined to require such careful preservation. Parallel with this, the younger maintains it a fallacy to assume that' "reading, writing, or talking about certain modes of conduct inevitably involves their subsequent practice." So far, then, so good. Both sides agree that adventurous thoughts are not synonymous with immoral acts. If this is so, one wonders what 90 per cent, of the argument is about. If the commentators on both sides are really convinced that there is no more immorality now among young people than there was fifty years ago, and that the new knowledge has not in any way deteriorated conduct, at least nine-tenths of the "problem" has disappeared at one hit, and the remaining 10 per cent., while not to be ignored, is hardly worth the meticulous attention that is often given to it. However much writers may analyse tendencies and- tear passion to tatters, it is results that count. So when results are counted out, still without pacifying the disputants, the feeling created is either that they are worrying unnecessarily, or that they are not too sure about the count-out, even though they are in verbal agreement on it. Within the region of the 10 per cent, of remaining difficulty comes the shock to the feelings of elders caused by the hair-raising . reading predilections of youngers. This laceration of elder sensibilities is certainly not to be treated without sympathy. But why should the shock be so acute if the "Elder Critic" really believes that the young people remain undented after touching the pitch? Here is a sample, of his complaint: .There is no denying that they do "touch pitch,' 5 these young people of what we used to call the better classes. Even the best of them keep what seems to us amazingly bad company, if not in actual practice, at least in print! They choose to live in fancy among the horridest sinners! "Why do they do it? Here it seeniß. to the present writer they have got actually out of sight, so far as we elders are concerned. We cannot see.what they are at. However humbly we ask for an explanation, we receive nothing but a banal snub. They do not, they say, "choose to bo ostriches," they see "no innocence in ignorance," or, most-ab-surd of all, they have some feeling for literature. , Perhaps the "feeling for literature" is a bit absurd, as things are nowadays. But it would not have been absurd when the "Elder Critic" was young. What about "La Dame Aux Camellias"? That belonged assuredly to the literature that gilds vice (quite distinct from the unliterature that to-day uses vice as a key to the market), and the Victorian youth, the male half at any rate, ran the gauntlet of the Dumas (pere et fils) and of other masters, besides the yellow-backs. Nobody has yet built round "Three Weeks," or any similar modern effort, the operatic and dramatic structure that has been reared on Camille, to the everlasting glory of a lady of easy virtue. Why, then, worry about the less insidious though more vulgar modern reading if it is no more resultful (in an immoral sense) than the Victorian? But perhaps "Elder Critic" is troubled not so much about what is read, as about what is read openly and openly discussed. The modern young ones talk more. But do they think more than the young Victorians did? And, after all, do they really know more, or does the difference lie in their parading of what they know (and particularly of what they do not know) ? It is the impression of some modern young ones that their minds partake of a complex. The real trouble very often is too much simplex, but it would be impolite to say so. The female ones generally meet polite people, with the result that the obsession tends to grow worse. And it certainly is not lessened by the amount of discussion that it receives both privately and in print. A good deal of feminine licence feeds on the obviously shocked feelings of the elders, and if the hair of the latter had not stood on end the hair of the girls might never have shortened. Favourable notice is good for fashion; unfavourable notice may be even better; the killer is no notice. If this modern fashion of reading and talking what may have been read but was not talked fifty years ago is really so harmless in result as both sides carefully state, the amount of protesting that has taken place, and which continues to take place, is not only unnecessary, but is positively harmful in that the over-emphasis of the shocks of elders encourages youngers to administer

some more. With some self-chid-ing, "Elder Critic" writes: "We need not be touchy because we have lost deference." Touchiness in any case produces but one result, and as to the lost deference, is an elder counsellor entitled to be very greatly deferred to if he carefully slates in advance that "the modest eyes and clean hearts" attributed to Victorianism still belong to these maidens and youths whose pride it is to look ihe sun in the face and stare it out of countenance? If their eyes and hearts fail not, ihe protest against modernism is over-done. If the protest is in order, then the premises would seem to be unsound. As the alternative finding— an increase in irregular immorality—has been excluded from the argument, there is no obligation lo discuss it here. It could not be accepted on a mere assumptive basis, and we know of no statistical evidence that would put it on any more sound foundation. But it is a world-old fact that people who do not fit into the scheme of nature are cast out from it. No childless woman or man exercises influence on human destiny for any long time, as lime goes. Those people who, for any selfish reason, contract themselves out of one responsibility, generally incur another; in any case, their negatively bad influence has not the permanence of the positively bad influence represented by the rapidly multiplying unfit. The menial complex of youth is generally grown out of, but the physical complex of the other class of menial abidclh forever. "An Elder Crilic"*is 100 shocked by what "the belter classes" are talking to notice what some of the other classes arc doing. Which is another way of saying that perhaps his biggest shock is still to come, and he is probably better off with the devil he knows (or thinks he knows).