“When a generation watches the young ones, their future, their responsibility, grow up, and when what they are to inherit is pitiful and so reduced, then the shame of it goes too deep for reasoning. No, it was not our fault that our children had to learn suchhardship, had to forego so much that we, the older ones,had inherited. Our fault it was not; but we felt that it was. We were learning, we old ones, that in times when aspecies, a race, is under threat, drives and necessities built into the very substance of our flesh speak out in waysthat we need never have known about if extremities had not come to squeeze these truths out of us. An older, a passing, generation needs to hand on goodness, something fine and higheven if it is only in potentialto their children. And if there isn't this bequest to put into their hands, then there is a bitterness and a pain that makes it hard to look into young eyes, young faces.”
