| MAXWELL EVARTS FOSTER | ||
| RUSSELL WHEELER DAVENPORT | WINFIELD SHIRAS | |
| ROBERT CHAPMAN BATES | FRANCIS OTTO MATTHIESSEN | |
BUSINESS MANAGERS
| CHARLES EVANDER SCHLEY | HORACE JEREMIAH VOORHIS |
Leader
Every generation is a foible. It is born of whim, and educated on fantasy. In adulthood it is naturally a freak. This younger generation in this year of our Lord 1922 is no exception. We were born of respectability, educated on pedantry. In adulthood we are revolutionaries. Could anything be more natural, more un-Victorian?
We were born secretly. God knows how such things happened in that age. Perhaps the Stork brought us, nicely done up in—well—baby-clothes. We were brought up on platitudes. Most of them were dressed up as Christian. We hid our meanings in pretty words, and our sense in a blush. The word sex was unheard of. We didn’t talk much about anything dirty. We never swore. We said our prayers. With goodness we were replete; it made our lives hideous. Ultimately it was our virtue that drove us to sin. We were too good for this world. Forced to live in it by the tyranny of our parents—we adjusted ourselves, and became bad.
As soon as lies become platitudes they are doomed. The next passer-by will see through their disguise and expose them. You can fool yourself with your own lie; but if your neighbors catch the habit from you, and begin fooling themselves with the same lie, in no time that lie becomes a platitude. The Victorians fooled themselves into thinking that anything you could forget didn’t exist any more. So were we born into a Virgin world. Our beloved ancestry had forgotten there was any sin; for us then there would not be any. We were their realized dream.
But unfortunately these little cherubim, these little seraphim grew up into adolescence, learnt things about sex by groping in dark corners, learnt shocking social problems by looking up words in Dictionaries; learnt in so doing to disbelieve every word the Victorians uttered. They had put their faith in that sort of royalty once too often. Genuinely they became skeptics. Because they had been taught by liars they could not afford to believe anything—without testing its verity. They are generous in their estimate of the society into which they are born. Instead of saying, “We are born into a world of liars,” they restrain themselves, consider the question rationally and say, “No, only into a world of fools.” And out of these Fools’ Paradise the younger generation has toddled. To them it was a hell.
Their first independent action was to set up Truth as their God. They had had enough of lies. Truth was their panacea. Ignorance was the abiding sin of mortality. Their battle was for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, not for the beautiful garden of Eden—where nakedness did not prevail upon innocence and blushing was unknown.
Part of this knowledge surely was scientific. The health of the body was all important: Biology, Hygiene, sex education. For these they cried out. They talked eagerly of germ-plasm and genetics; defiantly of birth-control, the double-standard.