rman army after
the war, however, includes, under Blaschko's proposals, compulsion and
surveillance carried to the finest details. A conservative summary of
the situation seems to justify the belief that measures of compulsion
will ultimately form an essential part of a fully developed legal code
for the control of syphilis. The reasons for this belief have been
extensively reviewed in the discussion of the nature of the disease
itself (pages 104-105). On the whole, however, the method of Great
Britain in looking first to the provision for adequate diagnosis and
treatment, and then to the question as to who will not avail himself of
it, is a logical mode of attacking the question, and as it develops
public sentiment in its favor, will also pave the way for a sentiment
which will stand back of compulsion if need be, and save it from being a
dead letter.

+Backwardness of the United States in the Movement.+--It will be
apparent, from the foregoing review of the world movement against
syphilis, and the essentials of a public policy toward the disease, that
the majority of our efforts in this direction have been decidedly
indirect. We have no national program of which we as a people are
conscious. It is all we can do to arouse a sentiment to the effect that
something ought to be done. In these critical times we must mobilize for
action in this direction with as much speed at least as we show in
developing an army and navy, slow though we are in that. To limit our
efforts to the passing of freak state legislation regulating the price
of a Wassermann to determine the fitness of a person for marriage, when
both Wassermann test itself, and Wassermann test as evidence of fitness
for marriage, are likely, under the conditions, to be absolutely
worthless, is to play penny eugenics. The move to take the gag from the
mouth of the physician when an irresponsible with a venereal disease
aims to spread his infection by marriage is at least intelligent,
preventive, even if indirect, legislation, because it acts before and
not after the event. Although at the present time we cannot boast a
single example of a complete program of direct legislation, the example
of Michigan, which is providing free hospital treatment for adults and
children with syphilis, should be watched as the first radical step in
the right direction. If war and our mobilization for defense leave us
with every hospital and dispensary and public health resource and all