r 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.

[Footnote F: It would be much less untrue to say that the remedy for the
venereal problem is _clean women_.--E.A.R.]

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 rig