od; and those others, whom they never
associate with us, for whom nothing is too bad. And what we have to
teach them is this--that our womanhood is ONE that a sin against them is
a sin against us, and so to link the thought of us to them that for the
sake of their own mothers, for the sake of their own sisters, above all,
for the sake of the future wife, they cannot wrong or degrade a woman or
keep up a degraded class of women.

I am aware that, besides the suggestions I have made, young men require
a plain, emphatic warning as to the physical dangers of licentiousness
and of the possibility of contracting a taint which medical science is
now pronouncing to be ineradicable and which they will transmit in some
form or other to their children after them. We want a strong cord made
up of every strand we can lay hold of, and one of these strands is
doubtless self-preservation, though in impulsive youth I do not think it
the strongest. But to give these warnings is manifestly the father's
duty, and not the mother's; and I hope and believe that the number of
fathers who are beginning to recognize their duty in this matter, as
moral teachers of their boys, is steadily increasing. In the case of
widowed mothers, or where the father absolutely refuses to say anything,
perhaps the paper I have already mentioned, _Medical Testimony_,[29]
would be the best substitute for the father's living voice.

And now let me conclude this chapter, as I concluded the last, with a
few scattered practical suggestions which may prove of use. My
experience has been that the vast majority of our young men go wrong not
from any vicious tendencies, but from want of thought, want of
knowledge, and a consequent yielding to the low moral tone of so-called
men of the world, and the fear of being chaffed as "an innocent." See
that your boy is guarded from this want of thought and want of
knowledge. When your son is a Sixth Form boy--it is impossible to give
the age more definitely, as it must depend upon the character of the
boy--place in his hands the White Cross paper, _True Manliness_ which
will give him the facts about his own manhood. This paper was carefully
revised by the late Bishop of Durham, Dr. Lightfoot, whose specialty was
young men; and upwards of a million copies have been sold, which in
itself guarantees it as a safe paper. Nor need you as a mother of sons
fear to read over any of the White Cross papers, since they concern
themselves, as t