But then, our daughters had no chance to know and choose, no test between real emotion and fevered desire—their own or another's. Inheriting a beautiful home-womanliness, the flower of sheltered innocence, they had to make and be themselves in the open of a new world. Nobility shone out among us in those days, miracles beyond belief of what woman can do and suffer for big, or small, men: a new vision of the mothering of humanity that brought God to our side. Also, alas, terrible shattering of English girlhood, ugly staining of the pure in heart, feverish unrest, a fury of overdoing, a hard glitter of cold joy. Always haste, never growth. Wherefore to-day our morality is an ash-heap, which some weep over, others kick up. _Dare we refuse to face the black awakening to disillusion?_ III BECAUSE WHILE THEY LIVED VIOLENTLY, YOUTH ALSO THOUGHT HARD. What was their "food for thought"? Largely away from, and independent of, personal influence from the intimacies of home life; almost entirely freed from authority even in daily conduct, and from the restraints of an accepted moral code; they talked and read. All the rebellions and revolts of before 1914 were conspicuously abroad. Above all, then and to-day, the novels (devoured for distraction) had forced sex-problems upon the most thoughtless; demanded for all on the threshold of life full licence for self-expression; analysed what they called the soul in undigested detail; lingered over body-contact, flushes and fires of the flesh; loudly proclaimed new Laws of Love. The whole experience of mankind, our most sacred instincts, are flouted with contempt. The conflicting claims, which none can avoid, between young and old, have been flung off. The old distinctions between wrong and right are categorically denied; all now demand an absolutely fresh start based on universal knowledge of sin, absolute freedom for the individual, frank discussion of physical intimacies, full rights to the Egoist—"a commonplace promiscuity that masquerades as liberty, as courageousness, as art. A slimy, glittering snail-track threaded through all society." And we have not, even yet, gone far enough! since, it is said, "Conversation is over-sexed, the novel under-sexed, therefore untrue, therefore insincere." By this creed, there is only one _real_ thing in life—physical passion. I do not suggest that contemporary thought is _all_ evil, unclean or false. Many of our writers are serious, pure-minded men and women, rightly indignant with old falsehoods, honestly seeking new light. Much of their work, too, reveals both sincerity and truth, a finer instinct for the ideal than the Victorians ever knew. Their courage is heroic, their frankness most wise.