To the great-hearted public this is becoming intolerable. But they know so little, and they wait so long for what the wise ones fear to tell. Not all these fears are sordid; there is a kind and gracious reluctance to shatter ideals. It is hard at times to combine beauty and duty. The way of the truth-teller is not made easier by charges of iconoclasm. "To know all is to forgive all"; that is not paganism but Christianity. So also, "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone." "To err is human: to forgive divine." Humanity, wisdom, tolerance, are wrapped up in these sayings. Yet when we think, as think at times we must, of the romantic faith that once was ours, contrasted with the realities of present experience, sex seems to have lost something of its soul of loveliness. And yet—can it ever regain this till men and women are at least clean?
If not—if the immoral man cannot be made better but rather worse, much worse, by needlessly infecting him with syphilis, then clearly the ideals of beauty and duty demand that we should apply effective sexual sanitation to the Nation until such time as we are all, every one of us, free from venereal disease. That time is not yet—and this is the essence of the whole problem. But victory is within sight. When it comes—then, and not till then—sex will regain its soul of loveliness. To this end—
"Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell,
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster."
Tennyson.
NOTE.
The Author will reply personally to any serious question concerning the subject matter of this book, provided stamped and addressed envelope is sent to her, c/o the Publishers.