Youth, Alone Indispensable, Has More Responsibility Than Old Age

HISTORY has never yet produced a more exciting, interesting, or more enjoyable age for Youth to live in than this twentieth century. It is a semi-civilisation, which has the potentialities of converting itself into a true civilisation, or, on the other hand, something terrible and frightening in the shape of the Greatest Human Massacre which the hand of man has yet devised for himself.
Today some live in luxury, many others in poverty. But whether rich or poor (and it is never pleasant to he one of the " have-nots ") Youth, always attracted by excitement, is lucky to be Youth in this day and age.
The Driver is Youth
The miracles of modern science, medicine, transport and newspapers are being controlled to an ever greater extent as the years pass, by the youth of today. Along with this heritage goes that genius which man possesses more than ever today: the genius for organisation. It is this
By Victor G. Summons
aptitude of man for organisation which will spell either success or failure for the future of the human race upon this earth.
Without it, it would be impossible to arm whole nations with the most efficient and horrible means of extermination possible, and then set these nations at each others' throats in bloody destruction, sometimes called war, with no other result than that not only the vanquished but the victors are defeated,
But is Youth Capable?
On the other hand, Youth will be able, provided it organises to this end, to abolish poverty, slums, and the other evils which exist today, and devote its energies to the construction of beautiful buildings, wide, straight roads, new hospitals not burdened by debts, cultural centres, the even distribution of wealth, and other schemes all directed to the common end of assisting the mass of the people to go through life in a more comfortable fashion than hitherto.
So, therefore, the young shoulders of Youth have an ever-increasing burden to bear as the shape of things to come is more and more moulded by them.
Are these young shoulders broad enough and strong enough to bear the weight?
Will Youth abuse the authority vested in them, as their fathers did in 1914?
Or will they control destiny in such a way that future generations will bless them?
Healthy Interest And Youth has reacted in a thousand different ways to these questions.
But the vast majority of these reactions are healthy ones, and, I believe, tend toward the common goal—the salvation of humanity.
Look at Youth in all its different aspects: on the sports fields, at worship in the
churches, arguing in their pet political parties, at recreation in their social clubs, or just taking their ease upon the barrackroom bed and wondering just why they are lying there. These things show that Youth today has tremendous intellectual curiosity about everything under the sun. Admire their bodies, you older people, and ask yourselves if you spent your Youth so passionately developing your bodies. Or did the pub round the corner hold a greater interest than mere social and religious questions? And do you think that Youth are perfecting their bodies only to have them broken on the wheel of war?
Utopia or Christ's Kingdom?
Youth knows only too well that they are prone to sing hymns of hate against each other from the retreats of their different creeds—churches, political parties and socials. But that is because they are young and eager, and it has ever been Youth's privilege to agree to differ and allow the hot blood to rise in them while they quarrel—and enjoy it. The important fact is that they all have the'same end in view.
Some call it Utopia.
Others, Christ's Kingdom on Earth.
And towards it Youth will march, some of them a little out of step, perhaps, but nevertheless towards it they will go.