yeas and honest kersey noes’; gone for ever is simplicity, which is as beautiful as the divine plain face of Lamb’s Miss Kelly.  Doubts breed suspicions, a dangerous air.  Without suspicion there might have been no war.  When you are called to Downing Street to discuss what you want of your betters with the Prime Minister he won’t be suspicious, not as far as you can see; but remember the atmosphere of generations you are in, and when he passes you the toast-rack say to yourselves, if you would be in the mode, ‘Now, I wonder what he means by that.’

Even without striking out in the way I suggest, you are already disturbing your betters considerably.  I sometimes talk this over with M’Connachie, with whom, as you may guess, circumstances compel me to pass a good deal of my time.  In our talks we agree that we, your betters, constantly find you forgetting that we are your betters.  Your answer is that the war and other happenings have shown you that age is not necessarily another name for sapience; that our avoidance of frankness in life and in the arts is often, but not so often as you think, a cowardly way of shirking unpalatable truths, and that you have taken us off our pedestals because we look more natural on the ground.  You who are at the rash age even accuse your elders, sometimes not without justification, of being more rash than yourselves.  ‘If Youth but only knew,’ we used to teach you to sing; but now, just because Youth has been to the war, it wants to change the next line into ‘If Age had only to do.’

In so far as this attitude of yours is merely passive, sullen, negative, as it mainly is, despairing of our capacity and anticipating a future of gloom, it is no game for man or woman.  It is certainly the opposite of that for which I plead.  Do not stand aloof, despising, disbelieving, but come in and help—­insist on coming in and helping.  After all, we have shown a good deal of courage; and your part is to add a greater courage to it.  There are glorious years lying ahead of you if you choose to make them glorious.  God’s in His Heaven still.  So forward, brave hearts.  To what adventures I cannot tell, but I know that your God is watching to see whether you are adventurous.  I know that the great partnership is only a first step, but I do not know what are to be the next and the next.  The partnership is but a tool; what are you to do with it?  Very little, I warn you, if you are merely thinking of yourselves; much if what is at the marrow of your thoughts is a future that even you can scarcely hope to see.

Learn as a beginning how world-shaking situations arise and how they may be countered.  Doubt all your betters who would deny you that right of partnership.  Begin by doubting all such in high places—­ except, of course, your professors.  But doubt all other professors—­ yet not conceitedly, as some do, with their noses in the air; avoid all such physical risks.  If it necessitates your