The Boom of Youth

Those novels about the Young Idea versus Crabbed Old Age, those films about Our Dancing Daughters, those Boy-Scout Jamborees, that Hiking Movement, that Slimming Campaign, that 'Beaver' Ramp, those foolish letters to the papers from alleged old colonels about the spinelessness and cocktails of the younger generation, those nostrums for preserving the School-girl Complexion, that glorification of Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan, those prodigies of Jehudi Menuhin, those babblings of Gertrude Stein, that smile of Mr. Drage, that shortening of skirts and bobbing of hair, those Nazis and Fascists and Bright Young People-perhaps you did not even see a connexion between these things? And, so far as the newspaper stunts were concerned, perhaps you did not take them seriously at all? Or are you one of the crétins who swallow the whole thing?Now Mr. Wyndham Lewis takes it all very seriously indeed. He has written a book about it which claims to be a 'research, as "scientific" as any branch whatever of biology or chemistry.' He has made a valuable collection of this nonsense from the press, but he does not regard it as nonsense. He sees a Sinister Purpose behind it all. The gigantic 'Youth-racket' of these post-war years is a put-up job. It is a machination of Big Business in its bid for power. It is baby-snatching on a large scale for the enslavement of Western Man

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