Youngsters

94-year-old Jan Hoek from Rotterdam wrote a letter to the youth that everyone will have read by now - since that string from Terlouw's letterbox, there has not been so much attention paid to a message from an elderly person.

That message is sympathetic and clear: young people, just keep it up for now, for us, then you can party again next year. For motivation, he talks about his own childhood, ten years of which he had to give in to World War II and its aftermath.

Good letter, according to friend and foe alike. Who got that back? But then a journalist got the bright idea to get four youngsters of about 17 years old to write a reply. You can hope those kids leave their screens alone for a few days, because they are being called out for "spoilt whiners", among other things, and I think there's going to be some more of that.

That is unjustified. Indeed, that letter action is not that far removed from child exploitation as far as I am concerned. That these 17-year-olds come across as spoiled does not automatically mean they lack empathy or that they have it far, far too good. It means that the sacrifices of countless people in the most recent world war made sense, and still do - the freedom for which they made their sacrifices proved so enduring that my generation already doesn't know what it must be like not to live in freedom, let alone these children.

When you read those letters, you are looking at a different frame of mind, which could only come about because of that unbridled freedom. And unless we want to change into the kind of people who say 'it would be good if there was another war, it would make them feel better', we should be lucky to have children who take the trouble to enter into dialogue from their world view. Because that dialogue is something the intermediate generations are significantly less good at.

Worldly-wise, children become wise by themselves, especially in this day and age - there is no need to fear that. Now their progenitors have to.