Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/42

Counter-Currents apply the term "white slave" to the wilful prostitute as well as to the entrapped child shows that a powerful and popular sentiment is absolved from the shackles of accuracy. Also that this absolution confuses the minds of men. The sentimentalist pities the prostitute as a victim; the sociologist abhors her as a menace. The sentimentalist conceives that men prey, and women are preyed upon; the sociologist, aware that evil men and women prey upon one another ceaselessly and ravenously, has no measure of mercy for sin. The sentimentalist clings tenaciously to the association of youth with innocence; the sociologist knows that even the age-limit which the law fixes as a boundary-line of innocence has no corresponding restriction in fact. It is inconceivable that so many books and pamphlets dealing with this subject—books and pamphlets now to be found on every library shelf, and in the hands of young and old—should dare to ignore 26