Snt,—I feel that the 'letter of E. W. L. printed
in The Spectator of September zoth under the title " Why Submerged? " requires an answer. Snt,—I feel that the 'letter of E. W. L. printed in The Spectator of September zoth under the title " Why Submerged? " requires an answer.
Evidently E. W. L. cannot appreciate the feelings of a generation whose most potentially important period of life has fallen on a time when all initiative is smothered and the folly and stupidity of mankind in general is laid bare for all to see. E. W. L. fails to realise that youthful frustration is not a personal matter so much as a realisation of common suffering without the means to alleviate it. The younger generation has the in- stinctive desire to perfect the structure of human society and put right the glaring injustices of the modern world ; they have not yet reached the age at which " Victorian courage, love of independence and stubborn self-reliance " can compensate for a suffering which is collective and not individual. Youth is not so much concerned with its personal troubles as with the almost insoluble problems to be tackled which have hardly been touched upon by E. W. L.'s generation of " stubborn self-reliance."
In addition, I personally at least can find no comfort in the deeds of " moving self-sacrifice " now made necessary, mainly for the younger generation, in order to preserve our civilisation from the ineptitude of the generations by whom this country was ruled before the war. A small fraction of our war-time endeavours applied to pre-war problems might have eliminated the necessity for the miseries of the present day. I can only say that the self-satisfied air assumed by E. W. L. leaves me not at all surprised by his question " Why Submerged? "—Yours " Tenterden," Northwood.
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