Don't be cross, Mother,
dear! Whom in the world should I ask but you? Don't scold me for
asking about it. Give me an answer.--How does it happen?--You cannot
really deceive yourself that I, who am fourteen years old, still
believe in the stork."

Were her mother herself not a victim of false notions of morality, an
affectionate and sensible explanation might have saved her daughter.
But the conventional mother seeks to hide her "moral" shame and
embarrassment in this evasive reply:

"In order to have a child--one must love--the man--to whom one is
married.... One must love him, Wendla, as you at your age are
still unable to love.--Now you know it!"

How much Wendla "knew" the mother realized too late. The pregnant
girl imagines herself ill with dropsy. And when her mother cries in
desperation, "You haven't the dropsy, you have a child, girl," the
agonized Wendla exclaims in bewilderment: "But it's not possible,
Mother, I am not married yet.... Oh, Mother, why didn't you tell
me everything?"

With equal stupidity the boy Morris is driven to suicide because he
fails in his school examinations. And Melchior, the youthful father
of Wendla's unborn child, is sent to the House of Correction, his
early sexual awakening stamping him a degenerate in the eyes of
teachers and parents.

For years thoughtful men and women in Germany had advocated the
compelling necessity of sex enlightenment. MUTTERSCHUTZ, a
publication specially devoted to frank and intelligent discussion of
the sex problem, has been carrying on its agitation for a
considerable time. But it remained for the dramatic genius of
Wedekind to influence radical thought to the extent of forcing the
introduction of sex physiology in many schools of Germany.

Scandinavia, like Germany, was advanced through the drama much more
than through any other channel. Long before Ibsen appeared on the
scene, Bjornson, the great essayist, thundered against the
inequalities and injustice prevalent in those countries. But his was
a voice in the wilderness, reaching but the few. Not so with Ibsen.
His BRAND, DOLL'S HOUSE, PILLARS OF SOCIETY, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF
THE PEOPLE have considerably undermined the old conceptions, and
replaced them by a modern and real view of life. One has but to read
BRAND to realize the modern conception, let us say, of
religion,--religion, as an ideal to be achieved on earth; religion as
a principle of human brotherhood, of solidarit