148 MY AMERICAN FRIENDS

dances for the " boys " to come provided with
hip-flasks of gin or whisky which they offered
to their girl partners. She hated the idea of
girls drinking anyhow, and had done her best
to dissuade her own daughters from the practice:
" But young people in these days go their own
way; parents have little influence over them."
What she most feared, however, was the
poisonous quality of the liquor carried by the
boys. She therefore made a practice of giving
each of the girls, when going to a dance, a flask
of pure gin, of which she kept a supply in her
house for the purpose. " It was the lesser of two
evils."

I have had many talks with American parents
on this and other aspects of their present difficul-
ties in dealing with the younger generation.
Here is the substance of one of them as recorded
in my diary. The speaker was an anxious
mother of five children, two boys and three
girls.

" The highbrows are always lecturing us about
the importance of the family, the value of a
mother's influence, etc., etc. As you know,
* mother' is the object of a kind of cult in this
country; we have our * Mother's Day/ when
the shops get rid of their old stocks as presents
for the dear old lady. The ' movies ' reek with
sob-stuff about * mother/ You know the kind
of plot. The son and heir gets entangled with
a bad girl; marries her secretly, or runs off