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The Tragedy of Youthful Deaths

“I just have this feeling that our generation is dying away.”—Johanna P., 18-year-old university freshman, Connecticut, U.S.A.

A GRISLY sight met the eyes of police officers on a farm just outside Hobart, capital city of Tasmania, Australia’s island state. Inside the house were four girls ranging in age from 10 to 18. All were dead, killed by their father, who lay nearby, with a mortal rifle-shot wound to his head. He had severed his right hand with an ax. This murder-suicide rocked the entire population of Tasmania. And it left a puzzling question in people’s minds—Why? Why those four innocent girls?

Belgium is still reeling in the aftermath of the sexual abuse of six girls and the murder of four of them by a rapist who was out on parole. And the same question—Why? In Argentina some mothers believe that 30,000 people, many of them their sons and daughters, disappeared in what is now known as the dirty war.a Some of these unfortunates were tortured, drugged, and then flown out to sea and dumped into the ocean from a plane. Many of them were thrown out while still alive. Why did they have to die? Their mothers are still waiting for answers.

In 1955 the World Congress of Mothers denounced the futility of war and declared that the congress is “above all a great cry, a cry of warning from all women struggling to protect their children, big and small, from the evils brought by war and the preparations for war.” Ironically, the number of youths who have died in bloody conflicts since that congress continues to mount up worldwide—a huge loss from mankind’s genetic pool.

Long History of Youthful Deaths

The pages of history are saturated with the blood of young people. Even in our so-called enlightened 20th century, racial and tribal conflicts have made youths a prime target for slaughter. It seems that youths have to pay with their lives for the mistakes and ambitions of their elders.

In one African country, a band of religious teenage soldiers calling themselves the Lord’s Resistance Army have been indoctrinated to believe that they are impervious to bullets, reports the journal The New Republic. No wonder the article is entitled “Teenage Wasteland”! Families bereft of sons and daughters—who were not bulletproof after all—therefore rightly ask: Why did our youths have to die? What was the point of it all?

Added to all this misery and suffering is the suicide death toll among youths.

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