YOUTH AND POLITICS.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 173, 9 August 1937, Page 4

YOUTH AND POLITICS.

" Thc complaint is general that new men Ht to be the political leaAers of the fnture are not in sight. Yet there never was so much youthful talent spending itself on writing, talking, lecturing, and theorising about politics, and yet faiiing to flnd any practical outlet; failing in the main because it has got harnessed to theories and ideologies which cannot he fltted, and never will be fitted, into the British way of life. I read the ^terature produced by these young . men and flnd it full of ideas which in due proportion would be extremely nseful, but I flnd them accompanied by a contempt for the practical and a scom for the eompromises and adjustments without whioh government simply cannot proceed in a free country. "They demand all or nothing. Since 'all' means that their ideas wonld need to be imposed here, as elsewhere, by measures which would be fatal to freedom and democraoy, they get nothing. Constant denunoiations of everything and everybody lose their effect by mere repefition. Those who can see nothing jolly or happy in the life about them become mere misqnthropes and 110 one listens when they scold. The last thing to be desired is the rule of the aged in any country, bnt when the young seem prematurely old, aad talk and write like embittered and disillusioned grey-beards, they fail to give us the special contribution for which we Iqok from youth." — J. A. Spender, in the "Yorkshire Observer."