In the spring of 1939 was asked by the editor of Werklätter, one of the leading periodicals of the Catholic youth-movement in Germany, to contribute to the final number which he had been permitted to publish before this periodical had to cease to exist— to save paper, as it was said. We former contributors were asked to state what we felt was the most important duty of young Catholics of our time. Since soon afterwards I left Germany, I did not receive an offprint of that article, but some while ago a friend of mine presented me with an odd copy of that issue. When I read it again, it struck me that, in spite of the world-shaking events which had taken place in the meantime, the fundamental spiritual situation which we then considered had very little changed.

The editor had given my contribution the title ‘Die lautere Wirklichkeit’, which I may perhaps translate ‘Reality, nothing but reality’. I still feel that the fundamental duty of Catholics in our time is to realise for themselves and for others that there are things which, though not belonging to the material and sensuous sphere, are real. It is the general characteristic of our age that its conception of reality is no longer derived from the external but from the internal world.