ld probably
be as good as in the army and navy. There would still be opportunity on
such occasions to bring moral forces and influence to bear on those who
would respond to them. There can be no object in withholding such
knowledge from those who are confirmed in their irregular sexual habits.
At the same time there could be few better influences thrown across the
path of one just starting on a wrong track than that exerted by a
physician of skill and character, to whom the individual had appealed to
avert the possible disastrous result of an indiscretion.

Chapter XVI

Public Effort Against Syphilis

+The World-wide Movement Against Venereal Disease.+--This chapter is
intended to give some account of the great movements now begun to
control syphilis and its fellow-diseases throughout the world. A
campaign of publicity was the starting-point of the organized attempt to
control tuberculosis, and in the same way a similar campaign has been at
the bottom of movements which now, under the pressure of the tremendous
necessities of war, are making headway at a pace that generations of
talking and thinking in peaceful times could not have brought about.
Although this country at the present writing is probably farther in the
rear than any other great nation of the world in its efforts to control
the venereal diseases as a national problem, it is fortunate in having
had the way paved for it by epoch-making movements such as those of the
Scandinavian countries, and by the studies of the Sydenham Royal
Commission on whose findings the British Government is now undertaking
the greatest single movement against syphilis and gonorrhea that has
ever been launched. For many years Germany has had a society whose roll
includes some of the greatest names in modern science, directing all its
energy toward the solution of the problem of sexual disease, and German
sentiment on these matters is developing so fast that it is difficult,
even for those in touch with such matters, to keep pace with it. In this
country progress has been much slower, hampered by peculiarities of
mental outlook and tradition very different from those which have
controlled the thought of Europe. The association of syphilis with
prostitution has been largely instrumental in putting much valuable
statistical and general knowledge of the disease into semi-private
reports and sources not available to the large mass of the thinking
public. The effect of finding