d babies, invalid
wives, and ruined husbands: broken-hearted and broken-bodied mothers
adding one fragment after another to the Nation's pile of damaged goods.

To the great-hearted public this is becoming intolerable. But they know so
little, and they wait so long for what the wise ones fear to tell. Not all
these fears are sordid; there is a kind and gracious reluctance to shatter
ideals. It is hard at times to combine beauty and duty. The way of the
truth-teller is not made easier by charges of iconoclasm. "To know all is
to forgive all"; that is not paganism but Christianity. So also, "Let him
that is without sin cast the first stone." "To err is human: to forgive
divine." Humanity, wisdom, tolerance, are wrapped up in these sayings. Yet
when we think, as think at times we must, of the romantic faith that once
was ours, contrasted with the realities of present experience, sex seems
to have lost something of its soul of loveliness. And yet--can it ever
regain this till men and women are at least _clean_?

If not--if the immoral man cannot be made better but rather worse, much
worse, by needlessly infecting him with syphilis, then clearly the ideals
of beauty and duty demand that we should apply effective sexual sanitation
to the Nation until such time as we are all, every one of us, free from
venereal disease. That time is not yet--and this is the essence of the
whole problem. But victory is within sight. When it comes--then, and not
till then--sex will regain its soul of loveliness. To this end--

"Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell,
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster."

_Tennyson._

NOTE.

_The Author will reply personally to any serious question concerning the
subject matter of this book, provided stamped and addressed envelope is
sent to her, c/o the Publishers._

APPENDIX I.

OTHER METHODS OF CONTRACEPTION.

1. _Withdrawal._--Immediately before emission the male organ is quickly
withdrawn, to avoid emission of seminal fluid in the vagina. Many men and
women feel this to be unromantic and nerve-racking, and otherwise
objectionable. The method is quite commonly practised, but it is
unreliable in multiple connections, and where the man has not complete
control over himself. It leaves the woman at the mercy of the man for
protection against impregnation.

2. _Sheath or Condom_ ("French Lette