VETERANS OF FUTURE WARS

There could be found no more poignant example of contemporary youth's prematurely cynical attitude toward the failings of its elders than the organization recently founded at Princeton. Calling itself the Veterans of Future Wars, the organization advances as the chief plank of its platform the immediate payment of a bonus to all males who will be killed in the next war. A similar movement at Vassar, The Gold Star Mothers of the Veterans of Future Wars, declares that it intends to send delegates to view the future burying ground of the future dead.

Ridicule has always been a telling weapon in the fight against society's foibles, from Aristophanes to Sir' Roger de Coverly, and from Artemus Ward to H. L. Mencken. Such an attempt at ridicule as Princeton's may be too obvious to call forth more than a tolerantly amused laugh from old and young alike; still it will attract attention, and that is probably all its progenitors hoped to achieve. The splendid points of the program, the stab at the Congress that will drain its coffers painfully dry, the shaft directed at the sometime patriots who in return for a sacrifice to their country now demand a neutralizing and unnecessary sacrifice, these are lost in the superficial hilarity of the thoughtless abandon of youth.

The striking fact to be observed is that in such a movement, no matter how frivolous, is expressed the bitterly callous attitude of our generation toward the evils that have been troubling mankind since the world began. It would have been a remarkable thing, nineteen years ago, to find college students making statements like this: "Since the coming war will otherwise deprive the most deserving block of its veterans of the Bonus by their sudden and complete demise, the Bonus must be paid now." The Princetonians who conceived this clever bit of humour are not to be censored. Youth must play: and deadly fatalism is quite as diverting as belligerent and shallow pacifism.

Whether or not this cork of worldly callousness can bottle up misguided youthful patriotism in time of stress, whether or not this attitude can be maintained in the face of the feminine sneer and the clear, sweet notes of the bugle, in these points lies the test of its merit. It is unfortunate, perhaps, but all too true, that even in contemporary youth there is a fatal weakness for romance that can be fearfully strengthened overnight by the evil genius of war hysteria, a weakness that no amount of premeditated cynicism seems able to control. And there are those, ready for war because they do not fight, who will take The Veterans of Future Wars in typical utilitarian fashion at face value.