In discussing the idealism of the Y.C.W. I am taking a great deal for granted. I am taking it as a proven fact that the conditions in which many of our young people to-day are forced to earn their daily bread are very often, if not usually, diametrically opposed to the ideals of the Christian Gospel. I am also taking it as an assumption that every real Christian will admit the necessity of some form of organized apostolate within the Church to cater for the Young Christian Worker in these anti-spiritual, anti-Christian conditions. Now the Y.C.W. movement claims to cater for this need and can claim a large measure of success in Belgium, France and elsewhere. I put forward here some brief outline of the ideals which have guided the founder of the Movement, Canon Cardijn, ideals which he has expressed many times, ideals which are their own recommendation.

We commence with two principles: the first, that all Young Christian Workers must be missionaries of their milieu, missionaries, that is, in their ordinary surroundings, in the ordinary atmosphere of the workshop, but, above all, missionaries who give a religious soul to every act of their life: and the second, that there is no external means of caring for the Young Worker at the present day. With regard to the first principle, note that I insist on the interior formation of the apostle, for the interior life is a source of activity of itself and in itself to which no other can be compared. Wc recall the words of the incomparable Bossuet: ‘Hands raised aloft in prayer smash more battalions than hands which strike.’ Yes, the inner life of the young apostle must be the branch filled with strong sap, of which his external works are but the flowers.