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 carried gradually and thoughtfully. As it is, women must be excused for seizing any temporary breeze of emotionalism (such as was caused by the death of W. T. Stead) to move on their ship of reform from the doldrums where it lies neglected.

It is not reasonable to say off-hand that legislation can do nothing to diminish the social evil, and a good deal of nonsense is talked about not making men good by Act of Parliament. The causes of prostitution are very many and complex, and though direct repressive legislation has always been worse than useless, because its only effect has been to harry and persecute and degrade still further the unhappy women, yet there are many directions in which legislation could touch the causes.

The movement, now already strongly on the way, for further knowledge is one of the most hopeful of all. Most thinking people are now agreed that children should be taught the nature of their bodies, and respect and care for them, and the only questions are how to give the teaching, by whom and at what age. Adult women, as well as men, should also know something of the pathology of sex, so that they can guard themselves, and so that men may realise more than they do now the fearful suffering which their excesses entail on the innocent. Purity has been preached to boys and men far too much as a vague ideal. If the results of lust appeared to them in their true form of hideous cruelty and cowardice, it would make the most thoughtless pause. Girls must no longer be taught