That these truths should be known and faced by both sexes _before_, not after, marriage; with all the consequences they involve and the dangers they should enable us to avoid: the risks of a "sheltered" youth and the real meaning of purity, true and false passion or love, marriage wrecked by ignorance, divorce, the unmarried mother, birth control, the position of the prostitute, etc. Truth, the ventilation of morality, the honest consideration of problems which may at any moment take us unawares, should not defile the heart or suggest evil thought. Real knowledge strengthens the will; and we must look at sin, see it clearly, if we can ever hope to conquer it. If some of us felt that these, in a sense "new," truths were rather hurried upon us, often crudely expressed and applied; we knew that each generation must seek its own light, and add something to inherited wisdom. We saw children cramped and losing _themselves_ in their fathers' fetters; we saw injustice, misery, and wasted lives; many a marriage that proved a prison or a doll's house. We learned honestly to face, almost for the first time, the terrible abuse of sex behind drawn blinds that, seeming an integral part of civilization, was eating away the very heart of humanity and condemning, with grim cynicism, the complacency of the old code. II THEN CAME THE WAR! —Which meant that thousands of boys and girls were suddenly snatched away from their homes and parents, flung out into the heat of life, under conditions of abnormal, and wholly vile, excitement. They had to act and think for themselves without guidance, training, or experience: to face problems almost entirely new to young and old alike. Practically, there were no safeguards. It was not that men rebelled against and defied the established traditions: these simply did not apply to life as it burst upon our sons and daughters. Normal existence was wiped out by a flash of lightning. The old duties, habits, manners, responsibilities, were rudely cast aside: for what seemed, and perhaps was, a higher call. The whole of life was revised in a few hours; and it is no exaggeration to say that none knew their way about the new world. Only a clear understanding of what war really meant for us, can reveal the special problems of to-day in their relation to the permanent, which are the only real, emotions and instincts of human nature. To a large extent, the mental and moral growth of all young men was abruptly stopped short. Those who have come back, physically fit, are—in all the essentials of character—five years younger than by the calendar, though more "fixed" in their few ideas. Many are further hampered and—in a sense—abnormal; maimed, diseased, or nerve-shattered; definitely unbalanced in some way; only half themselves, liable to sudden loss, or defiance, of self-control.