DISSENTING OPINION

There is so much that is utterly illogical and so much that is entirely divorced from any basis of fact in Mr. F. V. Lindley's article on the younger generation in the current issue of the New Outlook that his assertions demand definite repudiation by the group of college men for whom Mr. Lindley professes to be the spokesman. If there is any truth in the article, so much the worse for the younger generation.

Mr. Lindley draws a picture of the distress produced among small wage earners by bank failures which shows that he is aware of the breakdown of the economic system, but the refuses to admit that the breakdown is the result of any inherent inadequacy in the system in the face of modern technology and the growing complexity of world economy. Socialism he dismisses with an exclamation mark and a "God forbid." Socialism is very possibly not the right solution, but it can hardly be rejected off-hand without so much as the suggestion of an alternative solution.

The younger generation, and Mr. Lindley apparently identifies it with what is represented faithfully by a few serious-minded Yale seniors, is "going into politics fifty thousand strong." What is it going to do there? Mr. Lindley sees no need for reorganization, for any basic changes in the social structure. The fifty thousand are going to be "Honest."

This supposition that Honesty, goodwill, and earnestness can cope with the problems of today is almost unbelievable in its easy optimism. It is an innocent trust in divine harmony which outdoes even the optimism of H. G. Wells's faith in indefinite progress and the attainment of the millennium through the help of science and the popularization of knowledge.

Mr. Lindley's belief that the younger generation has rejected post-war cynicism and found a new faith which will carry it to great heights is as lacking in penetration as are his opinions on economics. What the new faith is it would be hard to say. The younger generation is not turning again to religion, Mr. Lindley thinks. It has not even accepted the stop-gap of humanism. For the young man of today is "amoral." Mr. Lindley speaks hopefully of this amorality with a fine disregard for the fact that the term "amoral" can have no meaning at all (unless it means immoral) for anyone to whom the word moral has a real meaning.

In the welter of confused thought in Mr. Lindley's article there can be detected a halting recognition that possibly the old principles of the competitive society to which he shouts his allegiance are not perfect. In his references to the "error in direction" in human endeavor and the admission that there is "something rotten in the system,"--in spite of his final conclusion that "there is nothing intrinsically wrong with our system"--Mr. Lindley shows that he is not 100 per cent sold on President Hoover's individualist philosophy of government. He gives no evidence, however, that he realizes the fundamental conflict between the Hoover philosophy and some form of the collectivist philosophy. Without the realization of what this conflict implies and a struggle with the problem involved, neither Mr. Lindley nor any others of the younger generation will achieve anything far-reaching toward the betterment of the social order.