THE YOUNGER GENERATION: NO REBELS THEY

EDWARD GANG, 26, in the Oxford undergraduate magazine COUTH:

THIS is not the Age of Anxiety. What distinguishes the comfortable young men of today from the uncomfortable young men of the last hundred years is that for once the younger generation is not in revolt against anything. We don't want to rebel against our elders. They are much too nice to be rebellable-agamst. Old revolutionaries as they are they get rather cross with us and tell us we are stuffy and prudish, but even this can't provoke us into hostility. Our fathers brought us up to see them not as the representatives of ancient authority and unalterable law, but as rebels against our grandfathers. So naturally we have grown up to be on their side, even if we feel, on occasion that they were a wee bit hard on their fathers.

I have been saying "our fathers," but of course we never think of that generation (the Joyce-Eliot-Pound one) as in any way paternal. They are just a bit older than we are, even if they have gone around being aged eagles for a very long time indeed. It is, however, a little unfair of them to criticize us for being dull. It is not to be denied that our poets are dim, even the best of them. Yet this is entirely because they have been taught from earliest childhood that Mr. Eliot believes in Tradition, and that it is better in every way to be a good minor poet than a bad major one.

Someone always says that we ought all to be impelled by the crisis of our time to feel uncomfortable, and think hard. And then they always mention the aspirate-bomb. Yet surely nothing has been more soothing to the nerves of the present generation than that bomb. At last, we feel, there is something truly final, something we can't be expected to do anything about. And since no one will ask our permission before using it, we can regard it with the polite calm with which we contemplate death in general: one doesn't expect to avoid it indefinitely and can't decently complain when it catches up with one.

IKE'S PRESTIGE UP SINCE ELECTIONS

Columnist WALTER LIPPMANN:

IT is a remarkable fact that in the few weeks since the election the prestige and power of President Eisenhower have risen steeply. This has happened in spite of the fact that the most significant Democratic gains were in the territory where the Republican party is most strongly pro-Eisenhower. Why, nevertheless, is the President's power growing? Primarily because the elections have put an end to his attempts to do the impossible--namely to unite the two wings of his party under his leadership.

Until last spring, Gen. Eisenhower was on the way to being as unsuccessful a President as was Gen. Grant. Like Gen. Grant, he was bewildered and helpless m dealing with a government that was usurping his powers. He was retreating before McCarthy. He was failing to defend the executive branch of the government and to uphold the integrity of his personnel. The tide began to turn when the Army, to be sure with his rather gingerly support, turned on McCarthy and fought back on the question of who was to run the Army. And this was followed by the President's decision not to intervene in Indo-China. This decision marked the defeat of the war party and the emergence of President Eisenhower as the arbiter of high policy.

There are many signs that the President will now have an easier time dealing with his own party. The pro-Eisenhower half is more than ever warmly attached to him. There will still be the hard core of the extreme right-wing. But they are no longer in control of any of the crucial committees, the President does not have to appease them in order to carry his measures, and they are left with nothing much more than the right and the power to speak. In any event a chief executive above parties and factions is the only kind of executive which Eisenhower is capable of being. The elections have deprived him of any further reason, indeed of any further opportunity, to try to be the other kind of President, the kind of President who rules and leads a united party.

BREAK OFF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA

Columnist and Publisher DAVID LAWRENCE in his weekly U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT:

THE fear of war grips everybody in the world, and the people of Soviet Russia are no exception. It is a hazard that the present rulers in the Kremlin have created which is dangerous to the future of all peoples. That is why we must never enhance the prestige of the present rulers of the Kremlin. We must not engage in "high level" conferences which can be played up in the Soviet press as examples of how the Western nations are bowing to the "great rulers" in the Politburo. We must not treat the leaders in the Kremlin as if they were our equals in the world and respectable representatives of a great nation. Only by a severance of diplomatic relations can we give convincing evidence to the people behind the Iron Curtain of the dangerous course which the evil men in power in Moscow have chosen to pursue. When diplomatic relations have been severed and the debate begins throughout the world, the moral force of all the oppressed people will be strengthened and stimulated so that they will in their own way bring into being in Moscow a free government which will have the respect of the rest of mankind. Such a free government will have earned not only recognition, but a rightful place in the family of nations, and, of course, in the United Nations itself.

NEUTRAL GOVERNMENTS SHOULD NEGOTIATE PEACE

British Philosopher BERTRAND RUSSELL in the NATION :

THE supreme fact that governments cannot bring themselves to face is that their aims can no longer be achieved by war. This applies equally to Communist and anti-Communist powers. Consider what is likely to happen in the first week of a world war. New York, Washington, London, and Moscow will probably be wiped out. All great states will disintegrate. Communism and modern capitalism alike will disappear.

If I belonged to one of the neutral countries, I should urge my government, and any other neutral government that might be willing to listen, to take very active steps to persuade both sides simultaneously to abandon the threat of war as an instrument of policy. It may be feared that neutral governments will shrink from a task which is likely to offend the most powerful nations of the world, for there is one matter on which all the powerful nations appear to be agreed, and that is that neutrality is an offense against morality and decency.

Two nations might possibly be induced to act in the sense that I have been advocating: Sweden and India. Neither is perhaps wholly neutral. Sweden's sympathies are Western and India's sympathies are Eastern; but both are legally neutral, and in cooperation they might display a genuine impartiality.

If each side were convinced that the other side realized the uselessness of war from the point of view of its own aims and ambitions, it would become possible to negotiate with some hope of reaching solutions. There are problems which, in the present temper of the world appear insoluble [e.g.], the unification of Germany. But no problem is insoluble where there is mutual goodwill and where concessions are not regarded by one side as a triumph and by the other as a disgrace. The truth is so plain and simple that it seems as if governments must in time become aware of it: the Communist and non-Communist worlds can live together or die together.

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