I LEARN FROM THE YOUNG

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21197, 21 August 1940, Page 4

I LEARN FROM THE YOUNG

A Plea For The Rising Generation (By Catherine Hebb) Cosmetic Age, as one might call it, comes in for a good deal of criticism from persons of mature years. Middle-aged people frequently talk as though lipsticks and lax conduct arrived on this earth together. They seem to think that the young of today with their vividly varnished nails and scanty underclothing are going soft. That they themselves, in their stay-bones and basqued camisoles, were made of sterner stuff. That the young have much to learn from their elders, if the young would only learn it. Personally I have to admit, humbly, that in my case at any rate the boot is on the other foot. I have learnt a great deal from the young of this generation. Ido not agree that the young of today are soft or degenerate. On the contrary, they are a far tougher lot than we were. They face realities with a courage we lacked. If I were asked to say what characteristic most divided today’s youth from that of yesterday I should point out their shattering honesty. They will have the Naked Truth. They will not have the poor lady all done up in whalebone corsets, as we did. They demand to know just what sort of a world this is that they have beep brought into. They insist on facts, not fairy tales. If they have got to lace unpleasant realities they face them, but for Heaven’s sake, say the young, don’t go telling us that things like wars and germs and slums are sent to us as test of character, because all that sort of thing is simply choked with whiskers and complete blah. The young have made me wonder, uncomfortably, if quite a lot of the things we were taught in our time weren’t utterly untrue. A Little Comfortable Moralising Like most of their elders, I have sometimes tried a little comfortable moralising on the young. I have said things like, “Selfish people are never really happy,” or, “Poverty, not wealth, brings contentment of mind.” The young of today, however, are not impressed. “Selfish people are never really happy!” they exclaim. They then proceed to point out that selfish people are frequently charming and genial just because they get what they want, and that their charm and geniality make them desired and popular, and that their being desired and popular naturally makes them happy. Whereas unselfish people set up in the objects of their good works a sense of obligation, which nobody likes, so that unselfish people are apt to be avoided, and that this makes them bitter and wretched. As for poverty breeding contentment! say the young. Would you be contented if you lived in a foul old-world hovel with the rain dripping through the roof on to your oh-so-quaint patchwork counterpane, and you couldn’t get hot baths or afford enough changes of underclothing, and you couldn’t pay for a library subscription or buy a wireless set or go to the theatre, so that your intellect became slowly infested with creeping fungus ? Speak up. Would you ? I have learnt, from the young, facts about hygiene that no one bothered about in my day, but that the young take in their stride. I have learnt from them the value of fresh air, and the main principles of diet, and how to be sensible about the care of one’s feet. Young people read better books than we did, and more of them. Their minds are more serious and inquiring. We in our carefree youth were content to take things as we found them, so long as we had our fun, but the stern young of today want to know the why and the wherefore of things. As a result the young talk well. They have revived the delightful Victorian art of conversation, and have made it a stimulating form of give-and-take. No, I cannot join in the chorus of criticism of the young. I have learnt too much from them to regard them with anything less than gratitude, affection and respect.