amount of restraint. It can be and it ought to be "jolly," but it
becomes a poor thing at once when either man or woman forgets dignity.
We are still at the experimental stage in traveling through this new
country that has opened up to us within the last twenty years; and if
that is a reason for being very charitable about mistakes, it is also a
reason for being alert to find the right paths.

I am very much impressed by the opportunity that lies before students
as a class in this matter. In most of our universities and colleges men
and women meet in the freest way, and they only and for themselves can
discover how this new kind of life is best conducted. College rules and
regulations are not going to do it for them. Indeed the older
generation is not going to do it for them. But if they will find out
the right way and establish for themselves the right standards and
conventions, they may do an immense service for the rest of the nation.
And I believe they are already in large measure doing this. My
experience has on the whole made me entirely hopeful, and has deepened
my faith in the fitness of men and women for freedom.

None the less and although I belong to the older generation, I propose
to offer some suggestions for this part of life. I cannot make much use
of the word "flirting." It has nearly as many different meanings as
Bolshevism. By some people it is applied to any high-spirited and happy
intercourse between men and women, in which case it signifies only a
right and good thing. Some people mean by it "playing at being in
love," in which case it is a silly and unworthy occupation which saps
the real love power in men and women. Others again mean by it the whole
bundle of silly and sentimental manners which some men and some women
assume when in the presence of the other sex, and in that sense of the
word flirting means just exactly the foolish thing that common sense