The brief career of Randolph Bourne began in 1911 when he published in theAtlantic Monthlya rejoinder to one of those perennial animadversions on the younger generation. In its February issue the magazine had featured “A Letter to the Rising Generation” by Cornelia Comer, a frequent contributor. Adopting a Roman sternness and a sarcastic religious voice, she censured the young men of good families for abandoning the ways of their fathers. She knew that new conditions would not produce the sort of men the old conditions had, that the rising generation had been “conceived in uncertainty [and] brought forth...