Nation Topics - Youth | The Nation

If one were asked to characterize this past decade, it might be fair to say that it has been a period of thrashing about. A search for stability, a longing for the "normalcy" of the pre-nuclear years, has rendered a substantial part of our population uncomfortable, unsure and extremely anxious. As a result, the arc of the U.S. social spectrum grows wider and wider. And, like a tired metronome, opinion becomes increasingly disposed to stick at other extreme. In many ways it is a relief to identify the sources of one's discontent by a simplistic "Them vs Us" identification. The majority of American youth are protesting the addiction to uncompromising viewpoints. They are protesting an unhealthy obsession with the past, with self-indulgence and self-hypnosis. They are protesting inertia, indifference, and the compromise of integrity for the sake of expediency. It is unfortunate that their protests generate overreaction in some quarters, even when they are not accompanied by violence or unreasonable conduct. Many young people are protesting those forces and conditions that generate radical reaction. Young people tend to view traditional law enforcement in a nontraditional way. Others question the honesty of a few police agencies across the country, not necessarily that they are corrupt but that their response to certain community problems is biased.

The article focuses on the political climate of the U.S. One naturally thinks first of the political climate, of the moral fever agitating the youth and troubling the nation over the war in Vietnam and one is struck by its familiar European character. A French visitor in particular, who has lived through the Algerian War, is impressed by the extraordinary parallel; postures assumed, rationalizations, arguments on both sides, the logic and even the tone are similar. But if one dirty war resembles another and if the interplay of politics and morality is so similar in the U.S. and in France, those who speak of the radicalization or the Europeanization of the U.S. tend to forget how temporary these manifestations may be.

In this article, the author reports about events and occurrence at the daytime screenings of Lincoln Center's New York Film Festival featured at Philharmonic Hall. It is reported that while 700 members of the press attended the screening and the hordes of paying customers crowded the shows that began at 630 in the evening, a very special group queued tip three and tour times a day for free tickets to the documentaries being shown at the 212-seat auditorium of the Library of the Performing Arts. Young film makers, buffs, students, social-minded intellectuals made up most of those who came a good hour in advance when the tickets for each event were distributed an unorthodox-looking crowd together in New York, New York, those days.

For four years now Americans have been hard at work rearming. No great and strong country has ever made these interests primary in its security program. It is true that Communists understand strength and can prepare to meet it. The only real aid Americans can offer is friendship and confidence. These are qualities of international life that do not require bombs and tanks and soldiers to make them accepted. Youth, technicians, and many generous taxpayers are more eager than people realize to throw themselves into a creative program.

When people contemplate the vast structure of laws and ideological directives by which the youth of the Third Reich have been pressed into a single educational mold, they can easily believe that all German youth, as the Nazis assert, have been made into fanatical National Socialists. But the facts are not quite so simple as that. Originally, in its fighting years, the National Socialist Party enlisted boys in its Storm Troops. At present the Storm Troops are lithe more than a reserve of militant party members, and the indoctrination of youth is in the hands of the Hitlerjugend.

Lawlessness and a decline of morals began in Germany soon after the establishment of the Nazi regime. On January 23 the district leader called a meeting of parents' representatives in the municipal theater to discuss the subject "Errors in the Treatment of Youth." He begged people to consider that the organization suffered from a great shortage of leaders and that the substitute leaders were frequently very young themselves. He admitted only a few isolated cases of delinquency. The feelings of the average German today are an indistinguishable mixture of all possible ingredients.

The article focuses on the book "The Youth Movement in China," by Tsi C. Wang. Nowhere else in the world today other than China, are youth so young, so full of the springtime of the world; and yet so old, so burdened with a sense of their responsibility to the world. In China, in a sense, a generation is being sacrificed on the altar of progress. There are no middle-aged men in modern China. There are grand old men, survivals of the old regime; and young men, fresh from Western education. The old men cannot adapt themselves to the swirling changes; the young men are forced to act beyond their capacities. It is unfortunate for men of talent to be born in China today.

The article focuses on the battle of war "Bull Run" as a representation of a nation of peace springing to arms. It was not only that the uniforms were striking, varied, and often bizarre, lacking wholly the deadly uniformity of the later days of the civil war. The ardor was high, the patriotic spirit of self-devotion even to death was stamped on thousands of young and resolute faces. Bull Run was one of the best planned battles of the war, but one of the worst fought. It was a dreadful shock to Northern pride.

The article focuses on the book "Ferdinand Magellan," by F.H.H. Guillemard. Fernão de Magalhães, son of Pedro de Maglhães of Sabrosa, was born in the year 1480, on a day not now discoverable. His family was noble and of the oldest in his kingdom of Portugal. Little is known of his immediate family or early youth, but it has been found that he was made a page of the Queen-Dowager Leonor, widow of Dom João II Dom Manoel, a monarch eminent for the services he rendered to the maritime interests of Portugal, indefatigable in promoting discovery and navigation, and in spreading Portuguese influence in the Orient.