ON THE OCCASION OF MUSTER

In radio messages compelling for their sincerity and understanding, President Roosevelt and Mr. Willkie have addressed the youth of this nation at a "solemn and historic moment."

It is a moment of "deep meaning" not only to the United States; nor merely to individual young men; but to youth-as-a-whole, to the great mass of students and workers and would-be workers who form the raw material of the American youth movement.

In Germany the youth movement had a long history, antedating the Nazis and intertwined with the land and folklore of the nation. Here in the United States the youth movement, such as it is, is the outgrowth of more recent times, and of economic rather than cultural longings.

Just as the existence of separate economic classes has long been denied as an American phenomenon, so there are many who have been reluctant to recognize the emergence of distinct age-groups. But almost together, and for similar reasons, both economic-groups and age-groups have appeared, grown self-conscious, and solidified. With the disappearance of the Horatio Alger type of opportunity, and with the spreading recognition that a rigidifying economic system may have only a closed door for new workers (whether dungareed or white-collared), young men have more and more sought a common rather than an individual salvation.

They have, too, not been loath to consider tinkering with the industrial structure facing them so coldly and discouragingly. This receptivity to change has characterized not only trade-union youth but college youths as well. Again unlike Germany--where university attendance was largely restricted to an upper caste, and students were accordingly conservative in their economic attitudes, American students--thanks to increasing scholarships and free education--represent many class backgrounds and are accordingly more familiar with the injustices of industrial society.

It is the combination of these two facts--widening economic backgrounds and narrowing economic horizons--that has been the driving force in the creation of a conscious youth movement in America. To our elders, reared in an earlier era of unmitigated confidence, youth's readiness to question that All's Right With the World has smacked of "radicalism" and "skepticism." It has led to endless preachments and a steady stream of protesting letters and articles in magazines and alumni bulletins.

Closely related to this age-youth division on affairs economic has been a disagreement over the issue of war and peace. Anything but eager to duplicate the 1917 performance, generally held--as last June's Commencement Orator phrased it--to "stand condemned by its record," youth has pointed to post-war economic blind-alleys as the direct outgrowth and aftermath of the war itself.

Yesterday youth, by no means unanimous in its support of compulsory military service, registered for the draft at Harvard and throughout the country. To many young men, as they signed their names, the same doubting attitude which had previously provoked adult criticism was present. Many had little sympathy with a measure which seemed imposed upon them from above. And to all those interested in the future of the youth movement, and of its promise as a means of achieving "a better world," arose a question. Would the Draft Act serve to strengthen and unite youth in a common consciousness, as the C.C.C. and N.Y.A. legislation has done? Or would conscription deaden youth's capacity to criticize, to hope, and to construct? In the answer to that question lies our contribution to "that unknown future where free men must and shall exist."