Why can't we face the situation now when we are trying to tidy up our social life. Health, that was necessary in war time, is surely equally important in peace? Even the prostitute, the professional and the amateur, will benefit: restrict the opportunities of this easy way of getting money and presents from men and other ways of living and obtaining presents must be resorted to. Thus there will be a finer chance of reformation than ever there was before. To urge moral reforms, to talk sloppy nonsense about liberty, about the poor prostitute, police interference, and all that humbug; to seek cover under "the unequal action of the laws between men and women," or any other form of excuse, is willfully to falsify the position. For myself, I assert without a shadow of hesitation, that I would quite gladly be wrongfully accused of street soliciting, submit to medical examination, be mistakenly detained in prison or any other indignity, if by so doing I knew I lessened by ever so little the chance of a syphilitic child being born.
Is the evil to remain uncorrected from one generation to another? That is the question. Uncorrected evil multiplies itself, and the sum is a huge national disaster. I wish passionately that I had greater powers to make you see what to me is so plain. The mistake has been the muddle-headed thinking that sets apart these diseases from all other sicknesses of our bodies, obscuring the plain and comparatively simple question of cure with the entirely opposed problem of punishment; a confusion and losing of the way that leads inevitably into a forest-tangle of difficulty and unanswerable questions. And this heritage of wrong-thinking has compassed our feet, binding them and throwing us down, as soon as we try to move on, always hindering reform from generation to generation, and, until that entanglement is broken through, by bringing into it the light of honest thinking, the evil will go on, unchecked by our futile tearings here and there at withered branches. The supporting stem will continue to flourish and the devastating diseases will be spread.
(See Sir G. Archdall Reid's letter in Appendix.)
FOOTNOTES:
[117:1] See Ed. Carpenter, "Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure."
[129:1] The Conference was held in the ball-room of the Club of the Allied Officers at Cannes.
[129:2] In this connection, it should be noted that there was a time when syphilis was unknown in our civilisation. It cannot be traced with any certainty in Europe before the fifteenth century, although its origin is involved in some controversy. The attempt to suppress venereal diseases by proper treatment is of little more than twelve years duration. Three men—Wassermann, Ehrlich, and Noguchi—have supplied the knowledge whereby the evil may be attacked. See "Motherhood and the Relationship of the Sexes," p. 283, et seq.
[132:1] "The Fight against Venereal Disease," by Raymond B. Hodick, The New Republic, Nov. 30, 1918.
[134:1] My own opinions have been greatly influenced by what has been done in England with regard to drink, and in the American Army in maintaining the health of the Army by restricting prostitution, which explains a change in my attitude, since writing the chapter on "Prostitution" in The Truth about Woman.