But in regard to the evil that we see around us, the problem is more difficult. Though the youth of this generation hope to conquer, the battle is still on. We have fought our way to a knowledge of things as they are, and we must now fight our way beyond it. That first fight was our first sense of the adventure of life. Our purpose early became to track the world relentlessly down to its lair. We were resolute to find out the facts, no matter how sinister and barren they proved themselves to be. We would make no compromises with our desires, or with those weak persons who could not endure the clear light of reality. We were scornful in the presence of the superstitions of our elders. We could not conceive that sufficient knowledge combined with action would not be able to solve all our problems and make clear all our path. As our knowledge grew, so did our courage. We pressed more eagerly on the trail of this world of ours, purposing to capture and tame its mysteries, and reveal it as it is, so that none could doubt us. As we penetrated farther, however, into the cave, the path became more and more uncertain. We discovered our prey to be far grimmer and more dangerous than we had ever imagined. As he turned slowly at bay, we discovered that he was not only repulsive but threatening. We were sternly prepared to accept him just as we found him, exulting that we should know things as they really were. We were ready for the worst, and yet somehow not for this worst. We had not imagined him retaliating upon us. In our first recoil, the thought flashed upon us that our tracking him to his lair might end in his feasting on our bones. It is somewhat thus that we feel when the full implications of the materialism to which we have laboriously fought our way dawn upon us, or we realize the full weight of the sodden social misery around us. Hitherto we have been so intent on the trail that we have not stopped to consider what it all meant. Now that we know, not only our own salvation seems threatened, but that of all around us, even the integrity of the world itself. In these moments of perplexity and alarm, we lose confidence in ourselves and all our values and interpretations. To go further seems to be to court despair. We are ashamed to retreat, and, besides, have come too far ever to get back into the safe plain of ignorance again. The world seems to be revealed to us as mechanical in its workings and fortuitous in its origin, and the warmth and light of beauty and ideals that we have known all along to be our true life seem to be proven illusions. And the wailing of the world comes up to us, cast off from any divine assistance, left to the mercy of its own weak wills and puny strengths. In this fall, our world itself seems to have lost merit, and we feel ourselves almost degraded by being a part of it. We have suddenly been deprived of our souls; the world seems to have beaten us in our first real battle with it.