nt. It may be undesirable that a boy should have full
knowledge, at the time he goes to school, but it is more
undesirable that he should go with a burning curiosity, or a
total ignorance on the subject. I am convinced that much might
be done in the way of prevention if boys were told more, and
allowed to be _open_. Much of the pleasure of sexual talk among
boys I believe to be due to the spurious interest aroused by the
fact that it is forbidden fruit, and involves risk if caught. It
seems to me that frankness is far more moral than suggestion. I
would not 'expurgate' school editions of great authors; the frank
obscenity of parts of Shakespeare is far less immoral than the
prurient prudishness which declines to print it, but numbers the
lines in such a way that the boy can go home and look up the
omitted passage in a complete edition, with a distinct sense of
guilt, which is where the harm comes in."

It is probable that only a small proportion of homosexual boys in
schools can properly be described as "vicious." A. Hoche,
describing homosexuality in German schools ("Zuer Frage der
forensischen Beurteilung sexuellen Vergehen," _Neurologisches
Centralblatt_, 1896, No. 2), and putting together communications
received from various medical men regarding their own youthful
experiences at school, finds relationships of the kind very
common, usually between boys of different ages and
school-classes. According to one observer, the feminine, or
passive, part was always played by a boy of girlish form and
complexion, and the relationships were somewhat like those of
normal lovers, with kissing, poems, love-letters, scenes of
jealousy, sometimes visits to each other in bed, but without
masturbation, pederasty, or other grossly physical
manifestations. From his own youthful experience Hoche records
precisely similar observations, and remarks that the lovers were
by no means recruited from the vicious elements in the school.
(The elder scholars, of 21 or 22 years of age, formed regular
sexual relationships with the servant-girls in the house.) It is
probable that the homosexual relationships in English schools
are, as a rule, not more vicious than those described by Hoche,
but that the concealment in which they are wrapped leads to
exaggeration. In the course of a discussion on this ma