them a life
of cruel suffering. The havoc which venereal diseases bring to the men
of all social classes is tremendous. The Report of the Surgeon-General
of the Army for 1911 states that with the mean strength of about
seventy-three thousand men in the army, the admissions to the
hospitals on account of venereal diseases were over thirteen thousand.
That is, of any hundred men at least eighteen were ill from sexual
infection. The New York County Hospital Society reports two hundred
and forty-three thousand cases of venereal disease treated in one
year, as compared with forty-one thousand five hundred and eighty-five
cases of all other communicable diseases. This horrible sapping of the
physical energies of the nation, with the devastating results in the
family, with the poisoning of the germs for the next generation, and
with the disastrous diseases of brain and spinal cord, is surely the
gravest material danger which exists. How small compared with that the
thousands of deaths from crime and accidents and wrecks! how
insignificant the harvest of human life which any war may reap! And
all this can ultimately be avoided, not only by abstinence, but by
strict hygiene and rigorous social reorganization. At this moment we
have only to ask how much of a change for the better can be expected
from a mere sexual education of the boys.

From a psychological point of view, this situation appears much more
difficult than that of the girls. All psychological motives speak for
a policy of silence in the girls' cases. For the boys, on the other
hand, the importance of some hygienic instruction cannot be denied. A
knowledge of the disastrous consequences of sexual diseases must have
a certain influence for good, and the grave difficulty lies only in
the fact that nevertheless all the arguments which speak against the
sexual education of the girls hold for the boys, too. The harm to the
youthful imagination, the starting of erotic thoughts with sensual
excitement in consequence of any kind of sexual instruction must be
still greater for the young man than for the young woman, as he is
more easily able to satisfy his desires. We must thus undoubtedly
expect most evil consequences from the instruction of the boys; and
yet we cannot deny the possible advantages. Their hygienic
consciousness may be enriched and their moral consciousness tainted by
the same hour of well-meant instruction. With the girls an energetic
no is the only sane ans