The Age-Old Battle Between Old aid Young

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 288, 25 February 1928, Page 24

The Age-Old Battle Between Old aid Young

a HERE is to-day much violent abuse of modern society girls. People allege as the reason for their dislike that we are a vicious crew, strangers to shame, dead to decency. But in reality their disapproval springs less from righteous wrath than from irritation. It is not our alleged immorality, but our egotism, that outrages (writes “A Modern Girl’ in the “Daily Mail”). We have not all got bad manners. But the tendency of all of us is to lay down the law and to correct our elders. We have learnt that repression and huxnwug are bad. We know we must think for ourselves. We have got hold of the idea of individualism. And, with these excellent theories, we run amok. We develop ourselves as aggressively as possible, and with the maximum of noise. We have no judgment but our own. We question everything. The more intelligence, the more serious interests we have, the more offensive do we become. Some of us still have very good manners in the way of waiting on our elders; but respect for age and its ; opinions, as such, seems very nearly gone. Sometimes I wonder if such an attitude ever existed. The young used to be repressed and silenced, but was their secret viewpoint different from ours? The feud between age and youth is of centuries’ standing. If I we cannot imagine w r hat it is like to

be old, those others seem strangely unable to remember what it was like to be young. Roughly speaking, the old-fashioned girl deceived her parents, and the modern girl defies hers. In the happiest examples we see some gifted individuals humour theirs. It is hard to see a remedy. If, for example, a girl thinks marriages are made in Heaven, and her parents think they are made by judicious mothers of docile daughters, what is to be done about it? This, however, is by the way. It is certain that our aggression, our conceit, and our egotism are very unbecoming. It is this —not, as our elders protest, our wickedness —that repels. The explanation, perhaps even the excuse, of this egotism is not far to seek. There is now the greatest cult of youth there has ever been. For the last ten years the novelist, the poet, the playwright, the philosopher, have glorified youth. It is the inevitable outcome of the war. How can we remain uninfluenced? Do we not hear of on all sides, and often see for ourselves, the mature and the hoary-headed trying ludicrously, tragically, to regain their youth? We notice in every night club undignfied grandfathers jigging it till dawn with jaded girls. We observe that the wisest and most lovable of our elders sometimes talk nonsense and make mistakes. We have not time to notice that we do the same, and more. W T e are told that youth is glorious, that the world is for the young. So we have become acutely conscious of our youth. Thus, we are in danger of losing all that makes it worth while—its enthusiasm, its impulsiveness, its innocence, its spontaneity. Through this cult of youth -we begin to lose our youth, without gaining any of the advantages of age. We become a pack of old young people, sophisticated without maturity, crude without freshness. And our elders do nothing but condemn us. It is hard to. blame them. We make no allowances for them, nor they for us. Yet, if they are more experienced, riper, and wiser, as they tell us, it should at least be no harder for them to deal gently with the opposite point of view.