ve no
other recourse than to sink lower and lower, until utter degradation
is reached.

We believe that the Oriental view of the situation is a far higher
standard of morality than is our Occidental attitude.

If there can lawfully be such an organization as is now being proposed
as desirable in large cities, namely, a "morals police," it certainly
should be instigated by a more sane purpose than that which is at the
root of our present police guardianship.

Attempts at suppression of prostitution have hitherto been conducted
on the principle that the women of that class are objectionable to the
sight of our mothers and sisters and wives, and the sinfulness of the
hopelessly "fallen" ones has been the theme of press and pulpit. And
all the time the women of the half-world have resented this attitude
as being unjust, and unfair, and hypocritical, and untenable. They
have known that if the act of selling their bodies to men is a crime
against the community, then more than half the feminine world is
criminal. And they have contended that since the "respectable" women
were neither contacted nor exploited by them, they cannot see wherein
they offend society, provided the laws of sanitation and segregation
are complied with.

In other words, they have said that it is none of Society's business
whether they sell themselves to one man or to a number, since they
must pay the penalty. And their attitude is relatively right. It is
none of Society's business whether a woman is a prostitute or not,
considered as an offense against Society. That is the wrong attitude
toward this condition of our social disorder.

No prostitute offends you or me. She, poor creature, offends herself,
and we offend her and ourselves by permitting social conditions that
make for such degradation. We are conniving with her to barter her
birthright of freedom and real love for food and shelter, and taint
and tinsel, whenever we encourage marriage on any other ground than
that of true love, and when we regard virtue as a matter of physical
contact.

If we judge from the many plays which we see on the boards; if we are
influenced by the press and the pulpit; we must acknowledge that the
general idea of sexual morality is an absurd one. The inference is
that one special organ of a woman's physical body is the sole
custodian of all virtue and all morality. The accepted idea seems to
be that if a woman is married her body is then the property of her
hu