MARIA : Really, I don’t know what we’re coming to!
JOHN : Things certainly aren’t what they used to be. No one seems to care anymore.
MARIA : That young man! He looked so extraordinary.
JOHN : I’d have thought all that long hair was such a nuisance. I suppose though it did cover his dirty neck.
MARIA : He’s just a parasite! Not working! Helping no one but himself. He doesn’t seem to give a damn about anything.
JOHN: Sometimes I wonder if our whole society isn’t collapsing about us.
MARIA : What’s so awful is the way these young people have all had it so good. They can’t even re- member the war!
JOHN : Well, that’s the trouble! Everything’s been too easy for them. They’ve never had to struggle as we had to.
MARIA : And the way they put all the blame for everything on their parents.
JOHN : Yes I remember meeting a young man in London who said that the mess the world’s in is entirely the fault of our generation.
MARIA : What nonsense!
JOHN : And the very fact that we grumble about the younger generation shows how stupid and insensitive we are. That is more intelligence and sympathy had been shown we’d get on better with them.
BARBARA : How unfair. After all, we’ve done our best.
JOHN : Of course, I suppose it is our generation who have been in charge of things. Mistakes have been made of course.
MARIA : Yes, but we’ll look at the problems we were left with by our parents’ generation! Look at the first world Wars. They started that and it pro- duced problems that were almost impossible to solve.
JOHN : Yes I’m sure that’s true.
MARIA : And talk of hypocrisy there! It was our parents’ generation who covered everything up. A lot of intelligence and sympathy they showed! We were much more emancipated.
JOHN : Yes. D’you realize we’re talking about our parents’ generation in exactly the same way as that young man talked about us? Perhaps the truth is that all parents everywhere have always been to blame!
