lays of Pinero and
similar ones would belong only indirectly in this circle--is probably
Wedekind's "Spring's Awakening." It brought to Germany, and especially
to Berlin, any education which the Friedrichstrasse had failed to
bring. To prohibit it would have meant the reactionary crushing of a
distinctly literary work by a brilliant writer; to allow it meant to
fill the Berlin life for seasons with a new spirit which showed its
effects. The sexual discussion became the favourite topic; the girls
learned to look out for their safety: and it was probably only a
chance that at the same time a wave of immorality overflooded the
youth of Berlin. The times of naive flirtation were over; any
indecency seemed allowable if only conception was artificially
prevented. The social life of Berlin from the fashionable quarters of
Berlin West to the factory quarters of Berlin East was never more
rotten and more perverse than in those years in which sexual education
from the stage indulged in its orgies.

The central problem is not whether the facts are distorted or not, and
whether the suggestions are wise or not, and whether the remedies are
practicable or not. All this is secondary to the fundamental question
of whether it is wise to spread out such problems before the
miscellaneous public of our theatres. No doubt a few of the social
reformers are sprinkled over the audiences. There are a few in the
boxes as well as in the galleries who discern the realities and who
hear the true appeal, even through those grotesque melodramas. But
with the overwhelming majority it is quite different. For them it is
entertainment, and as such it is devastating. It is quite true that
many a piquant comic opera shows more actual frivolity, and no one
will underestimate the shady influence of such voluptuous vulgarities
in their multicoloured stage setting. Yet from a psychological point
of view the effect of the pathetic treatment is far more dangerous
than that of the frivolous. A good many well-meaning reformers do not
see that, because they know too little of the deeper layers of the
sexual imagination. The intimate connection between sexuality and
cruelty, perversion and viciousness, may produce much more injurious
results in the mind of the average man when he sees the tragedy of the
white slave than when he laughs at the farce of the chorus girl.
Moreover, even the information which such plays divulge may stimulate
some model citizens to help t