Читать книгу The Scarlet Pimpernel Looks at the World - Baroness Orczy - Страница 6

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Allow me, my dear friends, to congratulate you on your young bloods of to-day. Self-deprecation seems to have become an art with you, for everywhere I hear an outcry about modern youth’s decadence. Yet when I look round me I perceive quite as much courage and as jealous a sense of honour beneath your young men’s nonchalance now as was wont to hide itself with becoming modesty beneath the wigs and laces of my own hair-brained young acquaintances — Hastings, Ffoulkes, Tony, and the rest of that pleasant company. And your women are no different, either. They may not altogether despise the privilege of their sex to play havoc with our impressionable hearts, nevertheless, when occasion demands, they will rise to-day to heights of courage and of efficiency which surpass anything that I can remember, demmed ungallant though it be for me to say this!

Never before in the world’s history has youth had such opportunities for self-expression and the attainment of success and happiness as are present to-day. And never before, certainly, has youth made so determined a claim to play its rightful part in contemporary affairs and to bring its boldness, initiative and enterprise to enliven and aid the caution and stability of age.

And looking at you young things of this twentieth century through my quizzing-glass, I make note of several things. You marry young nowadays, you take risks — as indeed you should — while you are still young enough to make a fresh start if perchance your first effort happen to end in failure. If you are lucky you win through while you are still young enough to enjoy the thrill of success, its power; its happiness and its responsibilities.

And, mind you, it is that horrible War that made you realize the importance of youth in the present-day scheme of life.

With a shock of surprise you suddenly become aware that the essential sign of manliness was neither a beard nor a bald pate, but rather a virile idealism and a determination to go through with a job once started, and both of these might be the attributes of a child with hardly a bit of down showing on his upper-lip! That abysmal catastrophe was so much an affair into which youth stepped with a smile and a shrug, that since then you have come to believe in youth as a magic power, the existence of which you had not previously suspected.

I am all for giving youth its chance. Youth is the time when ideals are not yet dimmed by cynicism and bitterness. Youth dares to longer flights of vision than age’s doubting sight can follow. Youth gaily takes risks which make crabbed age shake a warning head. And the amazing thing is that youth, in general, is right!

What is it that has made the American nation so remarkable? Merely its childish readiness to believe in and try out new ideas — to experiment, in fact. It did not laugh at Edison’s astonishing theories. It wrinkled its brows, puzzled a little, and then decided to back him up with money and influence. It believed in him, and thus it can now boast of having counted among its sons one of the greatest inventors the world has ever known. That is an example the older world to-day might do worse than follow, by ridding itself of its prejudices, its doubts and its fears, and having the courage to take every step which might lead to the development of the great forces of this world.

Yes, indeed I agree with those who so constantly assert that youth must have its chance. Life in the past might have been compared to a forest wherein tall pines reared their stately heads upwards to the light, whilst youth, like the stunted undergrowth, was stifled for want of the sunlight of chance. It was forced to spend its precious years striving to reach up to the level of its elders, and to reap the fruits of success when it was too weary to enjoy their savour.

I know that some of your modern idealists have talked of passing a law which would make retirement from business compulsory, say, at sixty years of age; they have even suggested that such compulsion should apply also to professional labours. That, of course, is carrying the argument to an absurd finish, because in a business undertaking experience is the most valuable asset, and in the artistic and professional worlds striving genius has no concern with age limit. It is true, perhaps, that in a good many instances your great new business concerns would, by this suggested law, be cleared of the incubus of aged and useless directors but in others they would lose the invaluable advice and assistance which experience alone can give.

Besides, age and experience themselves are necessary to the wise guiding of the headstrong spirit of youth. What pitfalls could be avoided, what obstacles overcome, what heartbreaks saved if only age would put its hard-gained knowledge at the disposal of the next generation! Of course, I know the demmed young hotheads do not suffer guidance gladly. They will not always listen to counsels of prudence, indeed, they would be spiritless enough if they did; but there is such a thing as showing them tactfully the possibilities of trouble ahead, and helping them to develop their own experimental ideas, however crude they might seem to older and wiser heads. Youth is a force that no power on earth can drive, but which a silken thread can often lead — all the more easily when the thread is in the hands of a pretty woman.

Far too often in this cautious age of yours do I see well-meaning parents compelling a lad to take up a career which is not congenial to him, and in which therefore he will never succeed. Why not let him take his own risks and be content to guide him adroitly so that those risks be not too great? And heavens above! why should parents insist on having their say and more than their say in their children’s choice of husband or wife? Even in my day we had come to realize that to cross the temper of a young lover is the surest way to drive him (or her) into the very embraces one fears.

Guide youth by all means, but do not seek to drive it. Give youth its chance, but do not stir it to revolt by holding the guiding-reins too tight. As with a mettlesome horse so it is with youth. Suggestion and love will in most cases call forth the very last effort of its strength, but the use of injudicious force will only result in a heartbreaking clash of opposing wills.

There is in your world of to-day a young and eager spirit of endeavour and of ambition; that spirit is a gift from the more general spread of education which you have brought about and developed since my time. It is for you to guide it, your task to stimulate it when it droops, to revive it should it show signs of decline. If you are content to do this the result will repay you a hundredfold.

And, egad! When in the course of the years that lie before you your men and women will have acquired not only the right to choose their own path in life, but also the strength to march boldly along it, to step over the rocks and thorns, to put a brave face after every stumble or fall, striving only to reach the summit of their ideal, then I say there will rise from out the ashes of the years of our failures the Phoenix of unconquered and unconquerable youth, with the torch of real progress in its hand, a torch that will lead this tough old world of ours to enduring happiness and peace.