the war there were about half-a-million fresh infections per annum among the soldiers in the British armies alone—about two million men infected altogether at the very least.[E] Some were cured, others patched up; some very badly treated; some not treated at all; many demobilised while in an infective condition, and thus liable to come home and sow in the bodies of clean women the seeds of diseases picked up in foreign lands in moments of excitement and folly. Blame these men if we must, but in all fairness let us ask ourselves: Who infected them? And the answer is: Diseased women.

The venereal diseases are passed on from one sex to the other in a continuous chain, but the chain can be broken at any time by either sex. And now it is the married women on whom we must rely to see that these infections are stopped. Leaving women to the chance protection of their partners is demonstrably a failure. Here is an extract from a letter sent me recently by an old and experienced medical practitioner:—

"I have had many women under treatment who have been continually re-infected by their husbands."

Men and women must both seek knowledge and both accept responsibility for the venereal problem. They must face this problem independently and in co-operation, and above all—face it honestly. There is no other way.

It is all very well to say that the man is responsible. That is only a partial truth.[F] The woman is equally responsible as soon as she is equally well informed. A woman's body is her own, and she will never be really free until she knows how to look after it properly. If she is fit to vote, fit to pay taxes, fit to hold her own estate under the Married Women's Property Act, why should she not learn to exercise intelligent and responsible control over her own self? Why do so many women allow themselves to be impregnated and infected against their will? Because they do not understand the construction and functions of their own body. When they do understand this, they will guard their own health as carefully as they guard their reputation. They will then not only keep their own sexual organs scrupulously clean, but they will encourage their husbands to do the same. Sexual intercourse is far more refreshing and exhilarating in every way when both husband and wife have cleansed their parts immediately before enjoying it. It is only natural that both should wish to be sweet and clean before approaching the closest of all bodily intimacies.

But more than this. Every well-informed woman knows that there is far more venereal disease in the world to-day, among men and among women, than there was before the war, and she should train all the members of her household in habits of strict cleanliness. Instinctively they will then avoid risking their health by contact with a possible source of defilement, or if the risk has most unfortunately been taken, they will instantly and instinctively remove and destroy the possible infection, in the same rapid and effective way as they would cleanse their boot from filth accidentally coming in contact with it. By all means let the mothers continue to inculcate virtue, but they should also teach sexual cleanliness directly and indirectly, themselves setting the example. After all, the microbes of venereal disease grow almost exclusively in the genital passages, and if these were kept sweet and clean there would soon be an end to venereal disease. It is not a matter of making vice safe: it is a matter of making marriage safe: a matter of restoring and maintaining physical health, family and national, and above all, of protecting innocent women and children, for if vice has its dangers so also in these days has innocence its own peculiar perils, and it is the cry of these victims—often so young and so fair—that must affect us most deeply.

More than fourteen years ago, Mr. George Bernard Shaw, in the Preface to "Getting Married," wrote the following regarding "The Pathology of Marriage":—

"As to the evils of disease and contagion, our consciences are sound enough: what is wrong with us is ignorance of the facts. No doubt this is a very formidable ignorance in a country where the first cry of the soul is, 'Don't tell me: I don't want to know,' and where frantic denials and furious suppressions indicate everywhere the cowardice and want of faith which conceives life as something too terrible to be faced. In this particular case, 'I don't want to know' takes a righteous air, and becomes 'I don't want to know anything about the diseases which are the just punishment of wretches who should not be mentioned in my presence or in any book that is intended for family reading.' Wicked and foolish as the spirit of this attitude is, the practice of it is so easy and lazy and uppish that it is very common, but its cry is drowned by a louder and more sincere one. We who do not want to know, also do not want to go blind, to go mad, to be disfigured, to be barren, to become pestiferous, or to see such things happening to our children. We learn, at last, that the majority of the victims are not the people of whom we so glibly say, 'Serve them right,' but quite innocent children and innocent parents, smitten by a contagion which, no matter in what vice it may or may not have originated, contaminates the innocent and the guilty alike, once it is launched, exactly as any other contagious disease does; that indeed it often hits the innocent and misses the guilty, because the guilty know the danger and take elaborate precautions against it, whilst the innocent, who have been either carefully kept from any knowledge of their danger, or erroneously led to believe that contagion is possible through misconduct only, run into danger blindfold. Once knock this fact into people's minds, and their self-righteous indifference and intolerance soon change into lively concern for themselves and their families."

The facts seem so plain, and yet there is still great opposition to the promotion of a knowledge of sexual cleanliness and self-disinfection. Only a short time ago (the end of 1920), Sir Frederick Mott, the great authority on syphilis, felt obliged to oppose some opponents of self-disinfection at a public enquiry in London in this fashion:—

"The point is that large numbers of innocent women have suffered from disease. They are rendered sterile, have miscarriages and abortions, and large numbers have been ruined. I have been connected with the London County Asylums for twenty-five years, and I have seen in those asylums people from all states of society, and I have seen them die of general paralysis. Five per cent. of the people who get syphilis, in spite of treatment, develop this disease. That is only one aspect of it. I was on the Royal Commission on Venereal Disease, and Sir William Osier, who was a great authority, said that he could teach medicine on syphilis alone, because every tissue in the body is affected by it, and that the diseases of blindness, deafness, insanity and every form of disease may be due to syphilis. You have only to consider the effect that it had upon the army, and I understand that more than two army corps were invalided during the war on account of venereal disease. What have you to say to that? Does not that create some anxiety?"

It is difficult even to read this eloquent appeal—the more eloquent perhaps because it was quite unpremeditated—without being deeply moved. Yet the witnesses opposing Sir Frederick Mott