ht to see
what the consequences of prudery are, that the necessary forces will be
brought into action. Meanwhile, what we call the social evil is almost
entirely left to the efforts made in Rescue Homes and the like. Despite
the judgment of a popular novelist and playwright, it is much more than
doubtful whether Rescue Homes--the only method which Mrs. Grundy will
tolerate--are the best way of dealing with this matter, even if the
people who worked in them had the right kind of outlook upon the matter,
and even if their numbers were indefinitely multiplied. Every one who
has devoted a moment's thought to the matter knows perfectly well that
this is merely beginning at the end, and therefore all but futile. I
mention the matter here to make the point that the one measure which
prudery permits--so that indeed it may even be mentioned upon our highly
moral stage, and passed by the censor, who would probably be hurried
into eternity if M. Brieux's _Les Avaries_ were submitted to him, and
who found "Mrs. Warren's Profession" intolerable--is just the most
useless, ill-devised, and literally preposterous with which this
tremendous problem can be mocked.

This leads us to another point. It is that the means of our education,
other than the schools, are also prejudiced by prudery. Upon the stage
there is permitted almost any indecency of word, or innuendo, or
gesture, or situation, provided only that the treatment be not serious.
Almost anything is tolerable if it be frivolously dealt with, but so
soon as these intensely serious matters are dealt with seriously,
prudery protests. The consequence is that a great educative influence,
like the theatre, where a few playwrights like M. Brieux, and Mr.
Bernard Shaw, and Mr. Granville Barker, and Mr. John Galsworthy, might
effect the greatest things, is relegated by Mrs. Grundy to the plays
produced by Mr. George Edwardes and other earnest upholders of the
censorship.

Publishers also, while accepting novels which would have staggered the
Restoration Dramatists, can scarcely be found, even with great labour,
for the publication of books dealing with the sex question from the most
responsible medical or social standpoints.

It is just because public opinion is so potent, and, like all other
powers, so potent either for good or for evil, that its present
disastrous workings are the more deplorable. It is not unimaginable
that prudery might undergo a sort of transmutation. As I have sa