aving only a few
faint traces behind. It is abhorrent to the English mind that even the
most degraded specimens of humanity should be compulsorily deprived of
rights over their own persons, even when it is claimed that the
deprivation of such rights might be for the benefit of the community. In
no country, perhaps, is the prostitute so free to parade the streets in
the exercise of her profession as in England, and in no country is
public opinion so intolerant of even the suspicion of a mistake by the
police in the exercise of that very limited control over prostitutes
which they possess. The freedom of the prostitute in England is further
guaranteed by the very fervour of English religious feeling; for active
interference with prostitutes involves regulation of prostitution, and
that implies a national recognition of prostitution which to a very
large section of the English people would be altogether repellant. Thus
English love of freedom and English love of God combine to protect the
prostitute. It has to be added that this result is by no means, as some
have imagined, hostile to morality. It is the opinion of many foreign
observers that in this matter London, for all its freedom, compares
favourably with many other large cities where prostitution is severely
regulated by the police and so far as possible concealed. For the police
can never become the agents of any morality of the heart, and all the
repression in the world can only touch the surface of life.

The English attitude, again, is characteristically seen in the method of
dealing with homosexual practices and other similar sexual aberrations.
Here, legally, England is closer to Germany than to modern France. No
country in the world, it is often said, has preserved by tradition and
even maintained by recent accretion such severe penalties against
homosexual offences as England. Yet, unlike the Germans, the English do
not actively prosecute in these cases and are usually content to leave
the law in abeyance, so long as public order and decency are reasonably
maintained. English people, like the French people, are by no means
impressed by the advantages of the German system by which purely private
scandals are made public scandals, to be set forth day after day in all
their details before the court, and discussed excitedly by the whole
population. Yet the English law in this matter is still very widely
upheld. There are very many English people who think that the