高级英语（第二册） Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men (Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)
1 No aspect of life in the Twenties has been more commented upon and
sensationally romanticized than the so-called Revolt of the Younger Generation. The
slightest mention of the decade brings nostalgic recollections to the middle-aged and
curious questionings by the young: memories of the deliciously illicit thrill of the first
visit to a speakeasy, of the brave denunciation of Puritan morality, and of the
fashionable experimentations in amour in the parked sedan on a country road;
questions about the naughty, jazzy parties, the flask-toting \
stylistic vagaries of the \
really so wild?\
a Younger Generation problem?\
\
a Younger Generation Problem; \
immoral in social behavior at the time can now be seen in perspective as being
something considerably less sensational than the degenerauon of our jazzmad youth.
2 Actually, the revolt of the young people was a logical outcome of conditions in
the age: First of all, it must be remembered that the rebellion was not confined to the
Unit- ed States, but affected the entire Western world as a result of the aftermath of
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高级英语（第二册） Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men (Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)
the first serious war in a century. Second, in the United States it was reluctantly
realized by some- subconsciously if not openly -- that our country was no longer
isolated in either politics or tradition and that we had reached an international stature
that would forever prevent us from retreating behind the artificial walls of a provincial
morality or the geographical protection of our two bordering oceans.
3 The rejection of Victorian gentility was, in any case, inevitable. The booming of
American industry, with its gigantic, roaring factories, its corporate impersonality, and
its largescale aggressiveness, no longer left any room for the code of polite behavior
and well-bred morality fashioned in a quieter and less competitive age. War or no war,
as the generations passed, it became increasingly difficult for our young people to
accept standards of behavior that bore no relationship to the bustling business
medium in which they were expected to battle for success. The war acted merely as a
catalytic agent in this breakdown of the Victorian social structure, and by precipitating
our young people into a pattern of mass murder it released their inhibited violent
energies which, after the shooting was over, were turned in both Europe and America
to the destruction of an obsolescent nineteenth-century society.
4 Thus in a changing world youth was faced with the challenge of bringing our
mores up to date. But at the same time it was tempted, in America at least, to escape
its responsibilities and retreat behind an air of naughty alcoholic sophistication and a
pose of Bohemian immorality. The faddishness , the wild spending of money on
transitory pleasures and momentary novelties , the hectic air of gaiety, the
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高级英语（第二册） Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men (Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)
experimentation in sensation -- sex, drugs, alcohol, perversions -- were all part of the
pattern of escape, an escape made possible by a general prosperity and a post-war
fatigue with politics, economic restrictions, and international responsibilities.
Prohibition afforded the young the additional opportunity of making their pleasures
illicit , and the much-publicized orgies and defiant manifestoes of the intellectuals
crowding into Greenwich Village gave them a pattern and a philosophic defense for
their escapism. And like most escapist sprees, this one lasted until the money ran out,
until the crash of the world economic structure at the end of the decade called the
party to a halt and forced the revelers to sober up and face the problems of the new age.
5 The rebellion started with World War I. The prolonged stalemate of 1915 –
1916, the increasing insolence of Germany toward the United States, and our official
reluctance to declare our status as a belligerent were intolerable to many of our
idealistic citizens, and with typical American adventurousness enhanced somewhat by
the strenuous jingoism of Theodore Roosevelt, our young men began to enlist under
foreign flags. In the words of Joe Williams, in John Dos Passos' U. S. A., they \
to get into the fun before the whole thing turned belly up.\
1916-- 1917, was still a romantic occupation. The young men of college age in 1917
knew nothing of modern warfare. The strife of 1861 --1865 had popularly become, in
motion picture and story, a magnolia-scented soap opera, while the one
hundred-days' fracas with Spain in 1898 had dissolved into a one-sided victory at
Manila and a cinematic charge up San Juan Hill. Furthermore, there were enough high
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高级英语（第二册） Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men (Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)
school assembly orators proclaiming the character-forming force of the strenuous life
to convince more than enough otherwise sensible boys that service in the European
conflict would be of great personal value, in addition to being idealistic and exciting.
Accordingly, they began to join the various armies in increasing numbers, the
\
wherever else they could find a place. Those who were reluctant to serve in a foreign
army talked excitedly about Preparedness, occasionally considered joining the
National Guard, and rushed to enlist when we finally did enter the conflict. So
tremendous was the storming of recruitment centers that harassed sergeants actually
pleaded with volunteers to \
self-respecting person wanted to suffer the disgrace of being drafted, the enlistment
craze continued unabated.
6 Naturally, the spirit of carnival and the enthusiasm for high military adventure
were soon dissipated once the eager young men had received a good taste of
twentieth- century warfare. To their lasting glory, they fought with distinction, but it
was a much altered group of soldiers who returned from the battlefields in 1919.
Especially was this true of the college contingent, whose idealism had led them to
enlist early and who had generally seen a considerable amount of action. To them, it
was bitter to return to a home town virtually untouched by the conflict, where citizens
still talked with the naive Fourth-of-duly bombast they themselves had been guilty of
two or three years earlier. It was even more bitter to find that their old jobs had been
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高级英语（第二册） Lesson 10 The Sad Young Men (Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards)
taken by the stay-at-homes, that business was suffering a recession that prevented
the opening up of new jobs, and that veterans were considered problem children and
less desirable than non-veterans for whatever business opportunities that did exist.
Their very homes were often uncomfortable to them; they had outgrown town and
families and had developed a sudden bewildering world-weariness which neither they
nor their relatives could understand. Their energies had been whipped up and their
naivete destroyed by the war and now, in sleepy Gopher Prairies all over the country,
they were being asked to curb those energies and resume the pose of self-deceiving
Victorian innocence that they now felt to be as outmoded as the notion that their
fighting had \
were not enough, the returning veteran also had to face the sodden, Napoleonic
cynicism of Versailles, the hypocritical do-goodism of Prohibition, and the smug
patriotism of the war profiteers. Something in the tension-ridden youth of America had
to \
complete overthrow of genteel standards of behavior.
7 Greenwich Village set the pattern. Since the Seven-ties a dwelling place for
artists and writers who settled there because living was cheap, the village had long
enjoyed a dubious reputation for Bohemianism and eccentricity. It had also harbored
enough major writers, especially in the decade before World War I, to support its claim
to being the intellectual center of the nation. After the war, it was only natural that
hopeful young writers, their minds and pens inflamed against war, Babbittry, and
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