Eastern Michigan University - Aurora Yearbook (Ypsilanti, MI)

Page 10 text:

letutcttton Between Age and Youth there is a constant struggle. The one strives by wheedling and authoritorian device to assert and maintain an ascendancy that years alone have given it. The other, resisting con- trol by the ideals, traditions, and customs of former gen- erations, attempts to break away from established rules or conduct, to open the doors upon unexplored realms of possible thought, and to live according to new ideals. The success of Youth in this contest is of vital importance to the race, for therein lies our only hope of progress. But the foundation for our hope often seems unsound, indeed. For Youth, absorbed in its rebellion against the restraints imposed upon it by Age, does not realize the necessity of forming new restraints of its own. Revolt, to be significant, must not only be against something; this negative aspect of revolt should be guided by positive objectives. In its eagerness to open the doors to truer Truth which Nature and Tradition have kept closed, Youth is indeed glorious. But this eagerness is not enough; being undirected, its ener- gies are soon squandered. Only when Youth knows what it wants, only when it has set up definite objectives, justified by Science, can it, with the aid of Science, open the doors that will make possible finer, truer living in the Hall of Life. It is, then, to a splendid, purposeful, valiant Spirit of Youth that wc dedicate The Aurora of 1921 h