sed to be possible. But even so, there are possibilities of error,
for experts are more and more coming to recognize the existence and the
importance of latent gonorrh[oe]a, devoid of characteristic symptoms but
yet liable to wake in the individual and always dangerous from the point
of view of infection. No combination of advantages is worth the dust in
the balance when weighed against either of these diseases in a
prospective son-in-law: infection is not a matter of chance but of
certainty or little short of it. Everything may seem fair and full of
promise, yet there may be that in the case which will wreck all in the
present; not to mention destroying the chance of motherhood or bringing
rotten or permanently blinded children into the world.

It follows, therefore, that parents or guardians are guilty of a grave
dereliction of duty if they neglect to satisfy themselves in time on
this point. Doubtless, in the great majority of cases no harm will be
done. But in the rest irreparable harm is often done, and the innocent,
ignorant girl who has been betrayed by father and mother and husband
alike, may turn upon you all, perhaps on her death-bed, perhaps with the
blasted future in her arms, and say "This is _your_ doing: behold your
deed."

"_But if ye could and would not_, oh, what plea,
Think ye, shall stead you at your trial, when
The thunder-cloud of witnesses shall loom,
With Ravished Childhood on the seat of doom
At the Assizes of Eternity?"

These pages may disgust or offend nine hundred and ninety-nine readers
out of a thousand. They may yet save one girl, and will have justified
themselves.

One final word may be added on the relation of this subject to Eugenics,
to which this pen and voice have been for many years devoted. The
subject of venereal disease is one of which we Eugenists, like the rest
of the world, fight shy; yet just because the rest of the world does so,
we should not. Nevertheless I mean to see to it that this subject
becomes part of the Eugenic campaign which will yet dominate and mould
the future. For surely the present spectacle has elements in it which
would be utterly farcical if they were not so tragic. Here we have life
present and life to come being destroyed for lack of knowledge. These
horrible diseases, ravaging the guilty and the innocent, equally and
indifferently, are at present allowed to do so with scarcely a voice
raised against them. Every day husba