Our ethics and their old sanctions are already in dissolution. That has been accomplished by the older, not the younger, generation. What the younger generation and their children[Pg 77] may be called upon to do may be to make the most rapid, far-reaching, and consciously intelligent readjustment of ethical ideas to altered social structure that the race has ever been called upon to make. We of the older generation have played with ideas and let loose forces the power of which we little dreamed of. We have, indeed, sowed the wind, and it will be those of the younger generation who will reap the whirlwind unless they can control it. Individually we may feel guiltless. We may merely have been busy with our intellectual hobbies, our money-getting, our loving and striving, but we surely cannot lay the blame for the intellectual or moral conditions upon the scapegoat of the “Younger Generation.” To condemn them and regard ourselves complacently is as unjust as it is unwarranted. They have inherited, perhaps, the biggest mess and biggest problem that was ever bequeathed by one generation to another. Never has the road been wilder or the signposts fewer. We may address the young in the words of FitzJames Stephen: “Each must act as he thinks best; and if he is wrong, so much the worse for him. We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If all stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? “Be strong and of a good courage.” Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. If death ends all, we cannot meet death better.” But if that is all the injunction we can give them, are we performing our duty, and can we blame them, instead of ourselves, if they take the wrong road, or if death ends all?[Pg 78] We of the older generation believe both from education in youth and from the experiences of our lives that there are certain values in life. In our minds they have the sanctions of tradition and experience. The new generation has no experience and declines to accept mere tradition. Is it not the duty of the older generation to face the problem, both for its own sake and that of the young, and seriously to attempt to arrive at some reasonable philosophy of life that shall validate the values it believes in?