In the Service of Youth. By J. Macalister Brew. (Faber.
7s. 6d.) OUR English word Youth is being written with a larger and larger Y. The present book belongs to the considerable literature which has grown up round this new subject of Youth, more abundantly since the creation of the Board of Education's Youth Service in 1939-41. Despite the sub-title, "A Practical Manual of Work Among Adolescents," it is in many ways a very sensible, wise and human piece of writing. Although primarily concerned to guide social workers in boys' and girls' clubs, the author urges the necessity for their genuine and thorough co-operation with local authorities and is impatient of that bitter war between the voluntary and statutory bodies which at present frustrates so many good intentions on both sides. She is no less alert to the dangers of a Fascist tendency in the movement and is careful not to isolate her club youth but to see them against their social background of home and industrial life. Nevertheless, she goes so far as to advocate a Ministry of Youth to cover employment and training, education, health and leisure. If a Ministry of Youth were a sensible conception, could a Ministry of Adults sound as silly as it does? Almost all Dr. Brew's observations on the young and their physical, emotional and spiritual trials show extreme good sense, yet inevitably such special scrutiny by one who has lived as an adult among them for many years produces a certain condescension towards the adolescent, as well as a bright determina- tion not to be priggish, that makes one a little uncomfortable. But with our existing conditions of social disintegration the problem is real and urgent enough, and it is too easy to scoff at those who have been tackling it. There is only the hope that its solution will be found through a quickening of our social life as a whole rather than by herding those of us who happen temporarily to be between 14 and 20 years old into a locked compartment labelled Youth.
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