The Conservative (Lovecraft)/October 1915/The Youth of Today
The Youth of Today.
The aggressive intellectual tone of the rising generation is indeed refreshing. Without the encumbering polish of former ages, the schoolboys of today fear not to speak as they think, and to attack dissenting opinion whenever and wherever they encounter it. Seldom has the Conservative enjoyed a livelier or more unexpected pleasure than that which followed the sending of his first issue to a youthful Union recruit. Master David H. Whittier, who had just graduated from a prominent Boston high school. Master Whittier, like his famous poetical relative, pounces virtuously upon unorthodox ideas wherever he may find them, hence he sent the Conservative a long, bitter, and unsolicited criticism of the (March) article on pan-Teutonism as soon as he had read it. Being not particularly designed for the Bostonian typo of involved intellect, "The Crime of the Century" failed to appeal to Mr. Whittier's refined taste, wherefore the young man admitted frankly that he did not like it, stated that the Conservative is a superficial, unscientific, and prejudiced reasoner; and accounted for his own violent opposition on the grounds that the Conservative's point of view 'so revolted him'! Mr. Whittier has requested permission to use in print certain portions of the Conservative's letters to him. This permission is hereby granted with extreme pleasure, since no pursuit is more gratifying than that of helping a worthy youth to shake off his natural timidity, and to come forth fearlessly into the United's public eye as a controversial giant. So long as the Conservative shall exist, Mr. Whittier need never want a victim for his bold sallies. Edgar Ralph Cheyney, in the May New Member, calls upon adolescence to express itself. Let him look Bostonward, for in David H. Whittier he may behold such expression at most exquisitely developed pitch!