ial reaction is quite adequate. In
Germany, Dr. Wilhelm points out, a man who allows his daughter's
_fiance_ to stay overnight in his house with her is liable to be dragged
before the police court and sent to prison for procuring immorality;[198]
to a Frenchman this is a shocking and inconceivable insult to private
rights.[199] So also with the German legal attitude towards sexual
inversion. The German method of dragging private scandals into the
glare of day and investigating them at interminable length in the law
courts is a perpetual source of astonishment to Frenchmen. They point
out that not only does this method defeat its own end by concentrating
attention on the abnormal practices it attacks, but it adds dignity to
them; a certain small section of the community justifies and upholds
these practices, but while in France this section has no reason to come
prominently before the public since it has no grievances demanding
redress, in Germany the existence of a cause to advocate in the name of
justice has produced a serious and imposing body of literature which has
no parallel in France.[200] Thus, as Wilhelm points out, we find exactly
opposite methods adopted in Germany and France to obtain the same ends:
"In Germany, punishment on account of alleged injury to general
interests; in France absence of punishment in order to avoid injury to
general interests; in Germany the police baton is called for in order to
ward off threatened injury, while in France it is feared that the use of
the police baton will itself cause the injury."

The question naturally arises: Which method is the more effective?
Wilhelm finds that these differences in national attitude towards
immorality have not by any means rendered immorality more prevalent in
France than in Germany; on the contrary, though extra-conjugal
intercourse is in Germany almost a crime, sexual offences against
children are far more prevalent than in France, while family life is at
least as stable in France as in Germany, and more intimate. "The freer
way of regarding sexual matters and its results in legislation have, as
compared to Germany, in no respect led to more immoral conditions,
while, on the other hand, it has been the reason why the vigorous
agitation which we find in Germany for certain legal reforms in respect
to sexuality are quite unknown."

It is forgotten, in Germany and in some other countries, sometimes even
in France, that to bring immorality within