In a recent book review of a modern novel, the writer speaks of “episodes which violate the reserve that is bred in the bone of the English-speaking peoples.”
It is a serious matter, to my mind, that that reserve is being deliberately violated by a number of well-meaning people at this time in the campaign that is being carried on against certain diseases.
“It is necessary,” these people say, “to speak plainly. Great harm has been wrought by ignorance. The innocence of the child has been its weakness. Under plea of modesty fathers and mothers have been foolish and cowardly,” and so on. You hear and see it everywhere, and lectures are being delivered, to mixed audiences, on things which, the apostle said, it was a shame even to speak of.
Now I believe that the necessary information can, and should be, given to children from twelve to fifteen; but it is my positive belief that it should be done by the parents, or else by the use of carefully prepared printed matter. A short, modestly written pamphlet can tell all that is necessary. It can be placed in the hands of the child with instruction that it should be read and destroyed; also that the parent will give any further information required. I believe that oral instruction on these matters, to more than one child present at a time, is bad and harmful.
I feel deeply in the matter, for I feel that harm is being done when a strong, fine, racial trait is being violated, in attempting a good work that can be better done, in my opinion, when it is done in harmony with our best traditions.
Attempts at allegory, comparisons with plant life, and so on, are all best left aside. The child should be told what is right and what is wrong, and why. But it should not be told in company with others, and especially not in mixed audiences. The inbred reserve spoken of is too precious a possession to be thrown away, even in a good cause.
Something of the same purport may be said of the social evil now so freely discussed in the press and forming so large a part of the subjects written about in your issue of March 8. “Frankness” and “freedom” are excellent, but some things are too fine to be tarnished by careless use, and modesty is one of them.
Where we are getting to in this new movement to tear away the veil that has screened the family life of America can be seen in some of the new fiction. For instance, in Arnold Bennett’s Carlotta the hectic heroine thinks that truth demands that one should follow the dictates of animal instinct!
The logical result will be that morality, either ethical or religious, will be sent to the waste basket.
Joseph D. Holmes.