THE SUBMERGED GENERATION
Sta,—I am just a nobody, and in 1939 I was one of those thousands of nobodies who (without thought of patriotism or any of the high-sounding terms used to describe it) joined the Forces. It was our job ; we knew it and we went gladly. Now I have come back, and I am a nobody with an arm off. I read Mr. Harold Nicolson's article on the gulf between young and old, the " we " and " they " of the young, and I believe he has touched upon a very, very important point. His friend's choice of word—forsakenness--was not the word I would have chosen ; a better word is " frustration " Everywhere " we " turn we are barred and frustrated. Take my own case. I joined up at twenty, and now even at twenty-four have never had a vote. I am told now that when the war is over (in a few years) the present state of affairs will continue for a further four years. By the time " they " allow me to vote I shall almost be a " they " myself!
My friends, abroad and fighting, or at home and bombing nightly, look to me to see that they are not forgotten whilst they are away. When the war is over they will come to me for a reckoning, and I dread this rapidly approaching day of reckoning. My older friends, here at home, from their armchairs laugh at my ideas, call me a young firebrand and tell me I will mellow with middle-age. I know that if I do mellow I shall die with the curses of the next generation ringing in my ears, curses because I never attempted to prevent a third world war. What am I to do? Where are we going from here? My life is planrted for long years ahead by men who, after all, have had their chance of preventing the second world war. I was never afraid of war when it came, nor of what it brought, but I fear and dread the peace! I dread the poverty and unemployment and bitterness that the last peace brought. What am
I going to do to prevent another such happening? I do not know! And then I take heart again. I notice in my friends' letters (friends who are proved fighters from Burma to Bradford) a resolve, after returning home and celebrating, to make peace and security for the generations to come, and a resolve that those in power now shall account for their
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