Beneath all this tinseled ugliness, however, there is hope. And the hope rests with that very college generation whom we so passionately accused. For all is not yet dead; there is a very real and persistent current of experiment in all fields. The neophyte painters, the tyro poets, the novice novelists, who feel they must create what is not only new and polished, but also good. There is a constant effort at cultural invention, weak albeit tenacious.

And there is precisely where the hope lies. Originality, for some, has become an urgent compulsion, not merely a contemporary fad. Perhaps the efforts of these few will spur the rest to think, to act, to be themselves. Perhaps somewhere in this vacant land, the value of character and personality will again be forced to the front, to battle with the hollow-eyed crowd of Others. And the battle will be good for all of us.

And this time maybe, possibly, potentially, hopefully the result will be better. Better, richer than goldfish swallowing and flapping, better than the abortive product of the energetic twenties. This time, hopefully, there will be a meaning to uniqueness, a purpose to novelty. There is hope yet in the colleges, where, in those few spirits, the blood runs rich and the mind sharp.

There is no dearth of ambition. The drive to succeed pulses through every young heart. And it is a desire to become known (substitute: influential, accepted, wealthy), not merely to become, as an individual. It is all "outer-directed" becoming. And somehow, amidst it all, I feel the whole futile surge of energy deserves a great horse laugh. The joke is on somebody, or everybody.

Yet, the same energy, the push and persistence, is a potential source of strength. Just as our industrial wealth can become the platform for a richer culture, the ambition, channelled into other courses, can be the impetus to improvement. At least it is better than passivity, or lethargic complacency.

The Real Desert

"The great American desert," said J.S. Fox, "is not in Arizona, New Mexico, or Nevada. It lies under the hat of the average man." We optimistically anticipate a time, not too far off, when average will not be synonymous with arid, when character will loudly announce itself as itself, and not as someone else; when the mass will be so throughly revolted with the tasteless mess around it that it will act on its revulsion.

There is, undeniably, a chord of tastefulness which beats quietly beneath the loud cacophony. Aesthetic quality is recognized when presented, not immediately perhaps, but eventually. And in the colleges, the few who choose and act and invent are tacitly recognized and admired. The admiration may lead to imitation, and the imitation to experimentation, and again, possible and hopefully, a renaissance of sprit, new color appearing amidst the grey.

But it is too easy to end in an optimistic key. What I offer is primarily an accusation, a charge of contempt at a generation, of platitudes and poker-faces, of bland naivete and old mens' souls, of belts in the back and repp in the front. And if the language is sharp, it is only because I am tried to too much smoothness everywhere around.