The Conference have also discussed at each meeting various aspects of the greatest single cause of illegitimacy—feeble-mindedness. They have tried to formulate more definitely the indicia of the high grade feeble-minded cases, and to determine more clearly the relation of the social worker’s investigation and history to the doctor’s analysis. They have debated the desirability of domestic service under supervision for these defective girls. The high grade feeble-minded girls if cared for in an institution probably cost the state more than the same girls doing domestic service, even allowing for the immense amount of surveillance necessary on the part of the visitor to keep them out of harm’s way. Neither institutions nor philanthropic agencies have enough equipment adequately to deal with this class of delinquents. The conference has faced the question of segregation in institutions and of sterilization as a means of preventing a continuance of this evil in future generations. They have asked whether it was ever safe to return a feeble-minded girl to the community. While agreeing that marriage of feeble-minded persons ought not to be permitted, they have not reached a final conclusion as to the best means of prevention.
A committee has been appointed to make an investigation of the causes other than feeble-mindedness that are at the root of illegitimacy. This committee has already done valuable work as a by-product of its main purpose in suggesting important points which agencies are apt to omit in their histories, and in aiding in a greater standardization of work. A full report is expected of this committee next year.
Study groups are being organized to take up the questions of legislation, venereal disease, the efficiency and range of existing institutions, public opinion, feeble-mindedness and statistics. Any further information about the Boston Conference may be had from the secretary, Mrs. Stanley King, 295 Beacon Street.
Minor in St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“What have you got against me?”
“Nothing. But our masters have ordered us to fight.”
PROBING
FOR PEACE
The investigational method has proved of such demonstrated worth in all-American situations—whether of civic conditions or strikes—that its application to the peace movement will be watched with interest. The reference is of course to the appointment by the International Peace Endowment, through Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, acting director of the endowment, of an international commission of inquiry into the Balkan war. The first move toward this is said to have come from Bulgarians who in consequence of attacks on them by the Greek and Servian press demanded a public inquiry into the extent and responsibility for atrocities committed during the war. The New York Evening Post calls the proposed work of the commission a “diagnosis of war,” and congratulates the peace movement on the greatest opportunity that has been presented it to win the world’s serious attention to the nature and implications of war. The topics of investigation include the responsibility for the outbreak of war, the economic waste caused by it and the truth about the outrages committed by non-combatants. Of these, the last appeals most strongly to the popular imagination, but the first, the responsible cause, is, in the opinion of the Post, the most fundamental. The main point of attack on war by peace advocates says the Post “lies in the direction of ascertaining who or what is responsible for war. Is it being fought for a worthy cause, or is it being fought because certain leaders or certain interests desire war? It makes all the difference in the world whether the mangled bodies on the hillsides in Thrace and Macedonia are the price paid for the liberation of the Balkans from Turkish misrule, or whether those dead bodies and shattered limbs are incidents in the ambitions of a king or a commander-in-chief, and a testimonial to the skill of travelling salesmen from the gun factories at Essen and Creusot.”
