Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/164

Counter-Currents which young people cannot advantageously acquire from the platform, the stage, the moving-picture gallery, the novel, or the ubiquitous monthly magazine.

Yet all these sources of information are competing with one another as to which shall tell us most. All of them have missions, and all the missions are alike. We are gravely assured that the drama has awakened to a high and holy duty, that it has a "serious call," in obedience to which it has turned the stage into a clinic for the diagnosing of disease, and into a self-authorized commission for the intimate study of vice. It advertises itself as "battling with the evils of the age,"—which are the evils of every age,—and its method of warfare is to exploit the sins of the sensual for the edification of the virtuous, to rake up the dunghills with the avowed purpose of finding a jewel. The doors of the brothel have been flung hospitably 148