JIFE’S Bridge of Sighs — “the bleak wind
[| of March, the dark arch, the black-flowing
river” — must Youth cross it alone?
That is the side of life that Youth does
not care to discuss. Gay, happy Youth
would forget that sometimes the avenue of
life crosses the river in the shadows, unlighted by
the lamp of human love and sympathy. It remembers
only when a comrade plunges over the arch alone,
and even then it soon swiugs back into the jostling
highways — to forget.
‘THE FULLNESS OF LIFE
HERE is much to make it forget. There is the
constant hurry — life is so full! Youth must
hasten through it to get its share of happiness.
Happiness, it declares, is its due, happiness only it
craves. But somehow in the gaining of that happiness
it keeps breaking over the bounds set by Age. It
finds itself often on the witness stand accused of
revolution against the standards of society. For
the most part it shrugs its shoulders indifferently
at its accusers, and smiles knowingly at its sym-
pathizers as they assert its frankness, its sincerity;
for Youth feels that it is only playing with the toys
of the society that condemns it; it knows it is frank
and sincere only as it suits it best to be.
Youth finds itself in a world of its elders’ making—
a world of great opportunities and responsibilities.
There are opportunities for enjoyable work, fascinat-
ing research, alluring wealth, stirring adventure.
Age has sought to provide well for Youth. It has
endeavored to spare Youth the drudgery which
it experienced, the suffering which it endured. It
has decreed that so far as lies in its power Youth
shall be happy, unfettered, untrammeled.
Vouth heartily agrees with this attitude of its
elders. But it knows, too, that Age has not solved
satisfactorily the problems which confronted
in youth and which overbalance, for many, the hap-
piness which Age has sought to provide. In the
shadows cast by self-seeking happiness is still Life’s
Bridge of Sighs. Age has given Youth a heritage of
war, crime, disease, social evils, political debauch-
eries, economic ills, divided homes, and a weakening
church, incompetent, quarreling, and afraid.
How does Youth meet the situation?— Just as it
has been taught by precept and example to meet it:
by quietly ignoring the problems of life in pursuit
of its necessary and lawful work; by endeavoring to
account for its problems through scientific phenom-
ena; by divesting its problems of their severity
through intellectual diversions in literature, art,
and music; by trying to solve its problems through
well-organized social reforms; by commercializing
its problems in a chase for wealth; by forgetting
PAGE EIGHTEEN
H. Armstrong Roberts
Spring, and Youth,
its problems in wild abandonment to pleasure; by
denying its problems in the illegal obtaining of
carnal desires, even at the expense of virtue and life
itself.
There are many in the ranks of Youth who would
gladly meet the issue fairly and step into the widen-
ing breaches of humanity. Some recognize the need
and are struggling with these problems of life, death,
THE WATCHMAN MAGAZINE