272 Singing Valleys 



And "Uncle Sam" is notoriously a bachelor. But authority in 

 the form of convention, of orthodox religion, of established 

 government, of capitalism. One cannot see and listen to our 

 youthful radicals in the university forums and on soap boxes 

 in Union Square without being reminded of Hiawatha, strug- 

 gling with West Wind for the power to free himself from the 

 great American Mother. 



They will tell you, for so they believe, that it is the existing 

 order of things which holds them in bondage. By overthrow- 

 ing that order, they say, Youth will come into its own. 



One only wishes that it were so easy. Youth never knows 

 what middle age pays a price to discover: that bondage is 

 always within ourselves. Freedom begins in the soul. For our 

 forefathers, the struggle for reality lay in the wresting of lands 

 from savages and the conquest of the fields. Today's struggle 

 lies in meeting the economic problems which are the result 

 of an enormous national, natural wealth. The battle-ground 

 is no longer in the forest and the fields. But no more is it in 

 the legislatures and the courts of law. It is within the soul. 



Freedom comes high. Like experience, "it is the price of all 

 that a man hath." For Americans, the price of freedom may 

 well be the sacrifice of the thing we value most youthfulness. 

 Not in the bodies of our young people, as has happened in 

 the past, and as still happens today; but the childish, de- 

 pendent state of mind which makes countless millions of us 

 willing to have someone else do our thinking for us. 



It may even be that as a people we shall have to grow up. 



