The war, which wasted and worse than wasted human riches, almost certainly threw away a larger treasury of youth than any previous generation could have done, for the reason that there was more youth to throw away. Surely the splendour of modern life, its variety and glitter and colour and movement, capable even of blinding men now and then to the drabness of its machine-processes, must have been due in part to the prolongation of infancy. There have been longer hours for play and more ways of playing: new games, new dances, new contests of speed and strength and dexterity, and in America especially an increasing return to the mimic wild life of the summer camp. What, among other things, peace must be made to give back is that abundance of youth. We need no increase of the birth-rate to absorb the energy of the girls; we need no new wars to waste the energy of the boys. We need instead to recognize this precious asset and to employ it. The first step should be to distribute the fulness of life among more boys and girls than had it before the war, when it belonged to a too narrow privileged class. The next should be to civilize it, not by cramping and restraining its activities but by associating them with thought and passion and beauty. In how many quarters of the world have athletics, the natural expression of the release of youth, been viewed as sheer rowdyism or at best as squandered power! But, viewed more largely, athletics must appear the physical symbol of the energy which the race has latterly been hoarding. Not athletics merely but the thing thereby symbolized must be drawn into the general current of existence. It means the enlargement of youth’s pleasure, the evocation of its deeper thought and passion, the development of its capacities. And of course whatever enriches youth in time enriches all society. YOUTH IS ALWAYS RIGHT