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.