[141:1] On this question the testimony of the American Army is urgent. They say, "Prophylaxis is under favorable circumstances secondary only in effectiveness to actual prevention of exposure.... When every other means have been used to make contact difficult if not impossible, prophylaxis, while not one hundred per cent. efficient, is invaluable as a last resort, and has contributed a large share towards maintaining in our Army the lowest venereal disease rate ever before known." Article before cited.
Fifth Essay
IF A CHILD COULD CHOOSE?
A PLEA FOR PROTECTION FOR THE ILLEGITIMATELY BORN CHILD.
"I have called and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded."—Pro. i. 24.
I
Circumstances, at different times, have made me think and care very deeply about the injustice suffered by children born outside the protection of legal marriage; it was, indeed, when I was still young—young in experience and very ignorant of life; long before I began to write, at the time when I was headmistress of a private school for girls, that the question first forced itself into my consciousness.
It was in this way. I was told suddenly that the parents of two sisters who had entered my school as boarders were living together without being married. I was requested to send the children away. I can recall the scene through the length of the years; the excitement of the parent who was my informer; the kind of curious enjoyment she displayed in telling me the story, an enjoyment which surprised me so much and angered me at the time, but which, of course, is so easy to account for. I did not understand then those "ever-moving and so to speak immortal wishes of our Unconscious,"[151:1] residing in us all, ready to break loose and force some expression in our daily lives.