s, but the poison which they engender soon
attacks other parts of the body and often wrecks the general health.
It gives rise to loathsome skin disease, to degeneration of the
nervous system and paralysis, to local disease in the heart, lungs,
and digestive organs, and to such lowering of vitality as renders the
body an easy prey to disease generally. No one is justified in looking
upon this risk as a matter of merely private concern. Health is of
supreme importance not merely to the personal happiness and success of
the man himself, but also to the services he can render to his
friends, to his nation, and to humanity. Even if a young man is
foolish enough to risk his happiness and success for the sake of
animal enjoyment, he cannot without base selfishness and disloyalty
disregard the duties he owes to others. Further, the man who suffers
from venereal disease is certain to pass its poison on to his wife and
children--cursing thus with unspeakable misery those whom of all
others it is his duty to protect and bless.

One cannot help feeling at times that the blessings of home--and of
the monogamy which makes home possible--are terribly discounted by a
condition of things which offer a young man no other alternatives to
chastity than these terrible evils. Now that year by year the rising
standard of living and the increased exactions which the State makes
on the industrious and provident cause marriage to be a luxury too
expensive for many, and delayed unduly for most, the problem of social
purity becomes ever greater and more urgent. The instruction of the
young in relation to sex provides the only solution, and is, I venture
to think, incomparably the most important social reform now needed.

I am confident that a boy who receives wise training and sex guidance
from his early days will never find lust the foul and uncontrollable
element which it is to-day in the lives of most men; that in a few
generations our nation could be freed from the seething corruption
which poisons its life; and that, while freer scope could be given to
the ineffable joys of pure sexual love, very much could be done to
diminish the awful misery and degradation engendered by lust.

If children had from their infancy an instinctive and growing desire
for alcohol, with secret and unrestrained means of gratifying it; if
by its indulgence this desire grew into an overmastering craving; if
throughout childhood they received no word of warning or g