possible person, but other clean-minded men,
including my dear Christopher, have told me the same thing.

The truth is that most men have never learned to resist sex temptation;
they grow up with the knowledge that they need not resist temptation,
which is the fault of society, as now organized, the fault of wrong
teaching, of insincere preaching, of nation-wide hypocrisy.

I have come to see that women, so long as they have not set themselves
as a body against this evil system (which they might evidently change if
they would act together) have no right to complain of its inevitable
consequences. Men will abandon sex excesses, as they have abandoned
drinking excesses, gradually, through education, through reasonable
appeal, through the resistless force of public opinion intelligently
aroused and directed by devoted women. And in no other way!

Meantime, it is the duty of individual wives to be merciful, as far as
they can, towards erring husbands. The cure lies often in more love
from the wife rather than in less love.

To any tortured wife who knows or half knows certain things about her
husband, I say this--"Dear friend, as long as you love him, forgive him.
As long as he loves you, forgive him. Be patient--enduring. Make the
hard fight against sensuality with your husband, but don't let him know
you are making it. Make this fight exactly as you would a similar fight
against alcohol or drugs."

A woman must be on her guard, however, lest she hide under a cloak of
forgiveness, some base motive in her own heart. Alas! I know, better
than anyone, how easily we women can deceive ourselves.

There is an ignoble forgiveness that is based on love of material
advantages--love of money. There are women who tolerate faithless
husbands because they are too cowardly or indolent to fight the battle
of life alone. What would they do if they left their sheltered homes?
Who would provide comforts and luxuries? How would they dress
themselves? How would they live? Shall it be by working? But they hate
to work. They have never learned to work. It was partly as a defense
against this woman helplessness that I took up trained nursing while
Julian was still alive.

A still more degrading forgiveness is based on sensuality. There are
women married to brutes of husbands who will endure every humiliation,
surrendering all their fine ideals and high purposes rather than leave
these coarse mates.

I first realized this just before I w