‘Message to the Young’ by Eugene V. Debs from Young Socialists Magazine. Vol. 10 No. 5. May, 1916.

If the young people to whom this brief message may come, and who are not yet Socialists, are influenced in the least by what is here said, I hope it may be in a way to induce them to study Socialism and learn about the Socialist movement.

Frances Willard in her advanced years joined that she might give the whole of her life to this great movement.

The young of today will tomorrow replace the old and rule the world, and nothing is more essential than that, they should be imbued with the spirit of the future and have ideas and ideals in advance of the sordid ones which have so long prevailed–ideas and ideals which will develop their latent energies and aspirations and inspire them to nobler endeavors and loftier attainments than were known to past generations.

This is truly a wonderful age–an age of magic, of marvels and miracles, and the young of today will witness the greatest social transformation in history. Indeed, the young will themselves be the chief actors in this transformation and determine by their capacity to meet its demands and take advantage of its opportunities the extent to which it shall elevate and emancipate the race and bless and ennoble mankind.

The Socialist movement is the essential historical instrument in this social transformation.

It is a young movement and a movement of and for the young. It is the movement of the future; the movement in which the young of today who are alert enough to catch its spirit will write their names in immortal letters in the history of the race.

Many of the old, the middle-aged, and not a few of even the young have a tendency to drift into ruts and grooves and remain there. They cease to grow except as they grow narrower. They live in the past and become fossilized. They are mentally dead long before they are physically buried. They vote the same old ticket, belong to the same old party, have the same old ideas, observe the same old customs, and venerate the same old superstitions their dead ancestors did, and if the world depended upon them it would soon be one vast cemetery.

But the greater part of the young have the spirit of the living present and their minds are receptive to the new truths and new ideas which precede the new and better future, and it is therefore to the young that the Socialist movement makes its especial appeal.

To the young the ideas and ideals of the Socialist movement, once understood, are not only irresistible but command unswerving devotion and unfaltering consecration.

Here social service is not only taught as a duty but practiced as a joy. Indeed, duty and joy are one in Socialism, and to serve greatly is to expand in grace and live nobly for all time.

To you who are young the world today presents the greatest opportunity ever presented to a rising generation since the world began. Can you but realize it, the future is rich beyond words with the fulfilment of your dreams.

I am not given to advice, nor to preachment, but I entreat the youth of the land to learn the meaning of this wonderful movement to them and to mankind, and to embrace its glorious opportunities for service and consecration in the cause of humanity.

The young should fairly flock to the splendid standard of the Socialist movement that symbolizes the coming era of worldwide democracy and of brotherhood and peace.

It is for the young to make mighty the Young People’s Socialist League–organized to teach them their first lessons in the cause of international fraternity–that its beneficent power may be felt in the great moral struggle to put an end to war and inaugurate peace throughout the world.

The Socialist movement is the greatest peace movement ever instituted among men. It binds the workers of all nations together in bonds, of brotherhood and love and teaches them that war is murder and a crime against humanity, and that it is their highest duty to dwell together in unity and peace, serve one another with all their hearts, and rejoice in the manifold blessings, of a commonwealth of comrades.

The young are naturally sensitive to the cruelties and horrors of war and all their sensibilities should be aroused against militarism in all its ghastly forms and against the social system which breeds war among nations and thrives in the bloodshed of the innocents.

In the Young People’s Socialist League the bright and promising young of today will find full play for all their faculties and full expression for all their hopes and aspirations.

To encourage the young in this great work is to go into partnership with the future and insure victory to the cause, and every one of their elders, especially the old and seasoned comrades, should help by all available means to interest the young in the movement that means so much to them, and to build up and make strong the Young People’s Socialist League that means so much to the movement.

In a sense all Socialists are young and the spirit of Socialism keeps them so. They continue to grow and while they grow they cannot decay.

Man is no older than his heart, and since Socialism keeps the heart young the decrepitude and infirmity that fall to the lot of those who live in the past instead of the future, are not Socialists.

It is in this spirit of youth, therefore, that I appeal to the young and not in the spirit of solemn and stupid moralizing that is one of the afflictions of old age.

To the young of the land and of all the world we extend our hands with our hearts in them and bid them welcome, a thousand times welcome to the Socialist movement whose glorious mission it is to bring peace and joy to all mankind and make this our world, a world of loving comrades.

Young Socialist’s Magazine was the journal of the original Young People’s Socialist League and grew of of the Socialist Sunday School Movement, with its audience being children rather than the ‘young adults’ of later Socialist youth groups. Beginning in 1908 as The Little Socialist Magazine. In 1911 it changed to The Young Socialists’ Magazine and its audience skewed older. By the time of the entry into World War One, the Y.P.S.L.’s, then led by future Communists like Oliver Carlson and Martin Abern, had a strong Left Wing, creating a fractious internal life and infrequent publication, ceasing entirely in 1920.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/youngsocialist/v10n05-may-1916_Young%20Socialists.pdf