¹ The New Men (New York, 1954), p. 301Google Scholar.

² Two very different kinds of comments illustrate this point: “The age of the important others as related to your own age is not merely a matter of age; but of race, nationality, social class, social status, sex, and a host of other variables. But the world is different for persons of different age and generation even if they share in common, sex, class, and nationality, and occupation.” Strauss, Anselm L., Mirrors and Masks: The Search for Identity (Glencoe, Illinois, 1959), p. 138Google Scholar. “The keyboard of environment on which coevals must play the sonata apassionata of their lives is in its fundamental structure one and the same.” Gasset, José Ortega y, Man and Crisis (translated by Adams, Mildred, New York, 1958), p. 44Google Scholar.

³ “In the army, as everywhere else, men of different generations have a hard time seeing eye to eye.” Barres, Philippe, Charles De Gaulle (Garden City, New York, 1941), p. 18Google Scholar. “During our entire childhood and youth we had — before the Second World War — grown up together, Riku and I. I had been the son of a prosperous newspaper publisher, he was from a working-class home, himself a worker. His father had been a Communist, my father voted for the right wing. But these circumstances did not separate us boys.” Talvi, Jussi, Isänmaa-Romaani (Helsinki, 1960), p. 16Google Scholar. All translations are my own.

⁴ Mannheim, Karl, “The Problem of Generations,” in his Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, edited by Kecskemeti, Paul (London, 1952), p. 283Google Scholar.

⁵ Wolfe, Thomas, You Can't Go Home Again (New York, no date), p. 715Google Scholar.

⁶ “God preserve us from our fathers' ways of looking at things.” Kirst, Hans Hellmut, The Revolt of Gunner Asch (translated by Kee, Robert, Boston, 1956), p. 34Google Scholar.

⁷ There is more to the problem of generations than ageing: “…the model of a regulated, and rather unchanging, series of age-graded passages of status is far too simple a model to be very useful for studying modern societies.” Strauss, , Mirrors and Masks, p. 134Google Scholar. See also Bauer, Raymond A., Inkeles, Alex, and Kluckhohn, Clyde, How The Soviet System Works: Cultural Psychological and Social Themes (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 190–191CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Some of the more important contributions to a sociology of generations are: Mannheim, , “The Problem of Generations,” pp. 276–322Google Scholar; Heberle, Rudolf, Social Movements: An Introduction to Political Sociology (New York, 1951), pp. 118–127Google Scholar; Eisenstadt, S. N., From Generation to Generation: Age Groups and Social Structure (Glencoe, Illinois, 1956)Google Scholar; Eisenstadt, S. N. and sBen-David, J., “Inter-Generation Tensions in Israel,” International Social Science Bulletin, VIII, No. 1 (1956), 54–75Google Scholar; Evan, William M., “Cohort Analysis of Survey Data: A Procedure for Studying Long-term Opinion Change,” Public Opinion Quarterly, XXIII, No. 1 (1959), 63–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Halpern, Ben, The Idea of the Jewish State (Cambridge, 1961)Google Scholar; Alexander, Edgar, “The Dilemma: The Generations' Problem,” in his Adenauer and the New Germany: The Chancellor of the Vanquished (translated by Goldstein, Thomas E., New York, 1957), pp. 33–42Google Scholar; Gusfield, Joseph R., “The Problem of Generations in an Organizational Structure,” Social Forces, XXXV (05, 1957), 323–330CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Among the relatively few exceptions are: Neumann, Sigmund, Permanent Revolution: The Total State in a World at War (New York, 1942)Google Scholar; Neumann, Sigmund, “The Conflict of Generations in Contemporary Europe: From Versailles to Munich,” Vital Speeches of the Day, V, No. 20 (08 1, 1939), 623–628Google Scholar; Rintala, Marvin, Three Generations: The Extreme Right Wing in Finnish Politics (Bloomington, Indiana, 1962)Google Scholar; Rintala, Marvin, “The Problem of Generations in Finnish Communism,” The American Slavic and East European Review, XVII, No. 2 (04, 1958), 190–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rintala, Marvin, “Väinö Tanner in Finnish Politics,” The American Slavic and East European Review, XX, No. 1 (02, 1961), 84–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rintala, Marvin, “The Politics of Gustaf Mannerheim,” Journal of Central European Affairs, XXI, No. 1 (04, 1961), 67–83Google Scholar.

¹⁰ These two kinds of generations are often equated, even in conceptually sophisticated studies, as when it is argued that “… a generation is still a generation in politics.” Deutsch, Karl and others, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton, 1957), p. 12.Google Scholar

¹¹ It is certainly an extreme overstatement to argue: “The history, political style, and future development of a political community reflect the quality of the relationship between fathers and sons.” Lane, Robert E., “Fathers and Sons: Foundations of Political Belief,” American Sociological Review, XXIV, No. 4 (08, 1959), 511Google Scholar.

¹² The latter describes his own agonizing reappraisal during his early twenties: “My father's tone of thought and feeling, I now felt myself at a great distance from: greater, indeed, than a full and calm explanation and reconsideration on both sides, might have shown to exist in reality. But my father was not one with whom calm and full explanations on fundamental points of doctrine could be expected, at least with one whom he might consider as, in some sort, a deserter from his standard.… I expected no good, but only pain to both of us, from discussing our differences: and I never expressed them but when he gave utterance to some opinion of feeling repugnant to mine, in a manner which would have made it disingenuousness on my part to remain silent.” Autobiography of John Stuart Mill (New York, 1924), p. 126Google Scholar.

¹³ This assumption is made even by so cautious an observer as Lehman, Harvey C., Age and Achievement (Princeton, 1953), p. 330Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Mannheim, , “The Problem of Generations,” p. 297nGoogle Scholar; Mannheim, Karl, “The Problem of Youth in Modern Society,” in his Diagnosis of Our Time (New York, 1944), pp. 39–40Google Scholar; von Klemperer, Klemens, Germany's New Conservatism: Its History and Dilemma in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, 1957), p. 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ One author apparently sees the generations approach as arguing that “… as the age-basis of commitment wanes, so will the commitment itself.” Berger, Bennett M., “How Long is a Generation?” The British Journal of Sociology, XI, No. 1 (03, 1960), 17Google Scholar. Generations advocates argue precisely the opposite: that the commitment does not wane through time.

¹⁶ Whether this same political attitude will appear liberal under radically changed circumstances is, of course, uncertain. It is quite possible that much of the confusion in the political vocabulary of any nation is due to the different meanings given to the same term by members of different generations. Herbert Hoover's liberalism, for instance, is still very real to him, even though younger generations in American politics consider liberalism to have a social rather than an individualistic connotation. Whether a political leader or follower ought to change his vocabulary to suit the needs (or possibly whims) of a changed situation is outside the scope of this study. It is perhaps worth noting, however, that in explaining the tenacity of “outmoded” policies, a generations approach to politics removes these policies from the realm of free choice, from the realm of moral judgments. In this respect, a generations approach has the same weaknesses and strengths as any other determinist approach.

¹⁷ An author critical of a generations approach nevertheless assumes that its advocates refer to “… the young child who is not in the labor market.” Hyman, Herbert H., Political Socialization: A Study in the Psychology of Political Behavior (Glencoe, Illinois, 1959), p. 125Google Scholar. Hyman concludes that, compared with college students, “… the younger child is not yet responsive to the impact of social change and is insulated from it by his home environment.” Ibid., p. 131. Rather than contradicting a generations approach, this conclusion is entirely consistent with the latter.

¹⁸ Mannheim, , “The Problem of Generations,” p. 300Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Rossi, Alice S., “Generational Differences in the Soviet Union” (Russian Research Center, Harvard University, 1954, mimeographed), I, 329Google Scholar; also, 322, 330.

²⁰ Linna, Vaino, Taalla Pohjantahden alia — toinen osa (Porvoo, 1960), p. 38Google Scholar.

²¹ Talvi, Jussi, Hyva on elama — Romaani (Helsinki, 1956), p. 193Google Scholar.

²² It is during this same time that he discovers the identity of his friends as well, as has been pointed out by SirBarker, Ernest, Age and Youth: Memories of Three Universities and Father of the Man (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 86Google Scholar. One need not accept Carl Schmitt's view of politics as the opposition of friend and foe to recognize the political significance of friendships in the formative years.

²³ Campbell, Angus and others, The American Voter (New York, 1960), p. 148.Google Scholar

²⁴ “… when I was twenty-five years old I already had this idea that the European countries should go together more closely.” Adenauer, Konrad on “Meet the Press,” 04 16, 1961Google Scholar. The Speaker of the Finnish Parliament said of J. K. Paasikivi: “Believing as a young man that by a conciliatory attitude towards the czarist regime the Finnish people could have the chance to live its own life in peace, beneath the shadow of the great neighbor, he had suffered disappointment. After pondering on this question for decades, he had found that a similar attitude still was the only solution. … After the war he was in a position [as President of Finland] to decisively influence the pages of Finnish history when the great concept of his youth proved to be right — the possibility of relaxing the state of tension on the eastern border without jeopardizing the country's independence or her inherited social values.” Sukselainen, V. J., “A Statesman's Life,” Finlandia Review (Helsinki: The Finnish Foreign Trade Association, 1957), p. 35Google Scholar.

²⁵ Dalton, Hugh, Toward the Peace of Nations: A Study in International Politics (London, 1928), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Morley, John Viscount, On Compromise (London, 1921), p. 1Google Scholar.

²⁷ Deutscher, I., Stalin: A Political Biography (New York, 1949), p. 43Google Scholar.

²⁸ Barker, , Age and Youth, p. 156Google Scholar; Gray, Cecil, Sibelius (London, 1931), p. 64Google Scholar.

²⁹ Mannheim, , “The Problem of Generations,” p. 310Google Scholar.

³⁰ Gasset, Ortega y, Man and Crisis, p. 44Google Scholar.

³¹ “Among aristocratic nations, as families remain for centuries in the same condition, often on the same spot, all generations become, as it were, contemporaneous. … Among democratic nations new families are constantly springing up, others are constantly falling away, and all that remain change their condition; the woof of time is every instant broken and the track of generations effaced.” de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), II, 104–105Google Scholar. “Extremely rapid change in modern civilization in contrast to most societies, tends to increase parent-youth conflict, for within a fast-changing social order the time-interval between generations, ordinarily but a mere moment in the life of a social system, become [sic] historically significanst, thereby creating a hiatus between one generation and the next.” Davis, Kingsley, “The Sociology of Parent-Youth Conflict,” American Sociological Review, V (08, 1940), 523CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³² It has been argued that generations change every fifteen years. Gasset, Ortega y, Man and Crisis, pp. 60, 65Google Scholar. Such a formulation is excessively rigid if it is meant to include all times and all places.

³³ Zimmermann, Erich and Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf (editors), Germans against Hitler: July 20, 1944 (Bonn, 1960), p. 220Google Scholar.

³⁴ “There still remain on this planet human groups which are isolated from all the others. It is obvious that the individuals in those groups who are of the same age as we are do not belong to our generation because they take no part in our world.” Gasset, Ortega y, Man and Crisis, p. 43Google Scholar.

³⁵ Mannheim, , “The Problem of Generations,” p. 298Google Scholar.

³⁶ The impact on European politics of the loss of millions of members of the war generation is a matter of great significance, especially with respect to political leadership, but it is not immediately relevant here. Suffice it to say that several decades later the war dead were sorely missed, when it came time for their generation to assume political leadership.

³⁷ Barker, , Age and Youth, pp. 83–84Google Scholar.

³⁸ Hitler's attitude towards the middle class was revealed in 1932: “The part played by the bourgeoisieis finished — permanently, my party comrades.” Rauschning, Hermann, Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations with Adolf Hitler on his Real Aims (London, 1939), pp. 48–49Google Scholar.

³⁹ Neumann, , “The Conflict of Generations in Contemporary Europe,” p. 625Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Somersalo, Arne, Taisteluvuosien varrelta — suomalaisen sotilaan muistelmia maailmansodasta (Helsinki, 1928), pp. 10–11Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Dalton, , Towards the Peace of Nations, p. ixGoogle Scholar.

⁴² Mannheim, , “The Problem of Generations,” p. 283Google Scholar.

⁴³ Ibid., pp. 304, 306–307.

⁴⁴ Talvi, Jussi, Yksi miljoonista — Romaani (Helsinki, 1959), p. 450Google Scholar.