If it were my duty to inform a boy, between 12 and 14 years old――and it certainly is not the business of any man to speak to girls about their bodily nature――I would not begin with botany. I would begin with mankind. I would tell him that all of us come out of the bodies of our mothers: and in that way come all creatures. I would argue from us to animals, not from animals to us. Then I would say something about the anatomical differences between male and female children: and I would tell him that this difference runs through all creation, all the distance from us down to plants and flowers. And I would say to him, “All creatures are formed in this way, in the bodies of their mothers, before they are born: but they cannot begin to be formed, till the male and the female have actually come together: and that is all that you need to know.” If it were my duty to talk to a young man 18 or 19 years old, I would talk to him as to any other man, freely and explicitly; I would also warn him of the disastrous bodily results which may follow even one act of wrong-doing, and how these results might be visited, years hence, on his children. And, of course, whatever the age, I would not only lecture, I would also preach. If I am to help a boy to “keep straight,” I must appeal from that which is natural in him to that which is spiritual in him. And――so far as adolescence is concerned――if ever there was a time when we ought to speak plainly, it is now. Whether we like it or not, the old habit of silence has for some years been falling away from us. Even before the War, we had begun to talk more freely, and to be less offended by plain speaking. The War has made it still harder for us to remain silent. We have seen, everywhere, boys and girls, all of a sudden, as it were transfigured: the boys turned into men, the girls turned into women; courage, obedience, endurance, flaming up in them, so that we marvel at them. But we have seen, also, the dark side of their life. They have gone ahead so fast, and their eyes are so dazzled, that some of them will not stop to read our danger-signals. Most of us have some influence over them, some of us have great influence. Things already are bad enough, and, in all probability, will be worse in the near future. Our influence was not given to us for nothing: and if we do not exercise it now, we shall be sorry, too late.