If a man determined, because his horse or his dog
showed exceptional intelligence, that he would endeavor
to develop that intelligence by setting the animal
at mental tasks, and so gave it only the exercise
that would come from moving about the room, and no
fresh air or sunshine, no road-work or hunting—well,
we are all quite familiar with what the result would
be.
If a parent had a child who showed unusual mental
precocity and thereupon forced the brain of that child,
with no outdoors, no fresh air, no sunshine, and even
to late hours, we all recognize that such action would
be criminal. Yet probably 50 per cent, of our
best executives, in their efforts to aid in the present
emergency, are doing just what we are ready to condemn
in the hypothetical cases given above. Some of
these men, while still able to whip up their will into
going on from day to day with the same exhausting
program, finally conclude that unless they take a
vacation they are going to break down. The doctor
tells them so and they know it. Whereupon they
rush off for a week or ten days; some of them enter
upon an orgy of exercise, others relax into a somnolent
state of lying around and thanking their stars that
they can rest at last. They certainly do feel
better and do improve, but they come back to work
merely to begin the same old vicious round. They
have had their lesson, but they have not learned it.
This is a young nation. It began with the great
gods of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
And it fought a good fight in the War of Independence
for Freedom and Equality. Then came the lesser
gods of material success. They broke the nation
apart. But it survived. Since the Civil
War we have grown rich and fat, flaccid and spineless.
We are like a great, careless boy with a rich father;
our crops and material resources symbolize the rich
father who is able to pay for all his son’s
foolishness. And so the youth has never stopped
to think. But underneath that careless exterior
there are muscle and character. For what is the
history of Youth? If the youth is to become a
real man he cannot be curbed to the extent of forgetting
courage in an excess of caution. And the rush
of our youth to the service showed this.
An Englishman once writing of the tendency of the
elders to blot out all the fire of youth with restrictive
legislation, said, “It is a fearful responsibility
to be young, and none can bear it like their elders.”
How can a youth whose blood is warm within sit like
his grandsire carved in alabaster? He cannot
and he will not, and that is the salvation of the
race. It is the old story of the stag in the herd.
He will see no other usurp his rights until he is
too old to have any.
