Many facts are brought forward in support of this criticism from schools, from newspapers, from general surveys of our national life at present.

And those who study more closely the Catholic body say that we too are sharing in this extreme, and that the Catholic body though small in number is more responsible and more deserving of reproof if it falls from its ideals, for it has ideals.

It is only Catholic girls who concern us here, but our girls among other girls, and Catholic women among other women have the privilege as well as the duty of upholding what is highest.

We belong by right to the graver side of the human race, for those who know must be in an emergency graver, less reckless on the one hand, less panic-stricken on the other, than those who do not know.

We can never be entirely "at play." And if some of us should be for a time carried away by the current, and momentarily completely "at play," it must be in a wave of reaction from the long grinding of endurance under the penal times.