a betterment and a new hope. The evil was the result
of the silence itself. Free speech and public discussion alone can
remove the misery and cleanse the social life. The parents must know,
and the teachers must know, and the boys must know, and the girls must
know, if the abhorrent ills are ever to be removed.

But there are two elements in the situation which ought to be
separated in sober thought. There may be agreement on the one and yet
disagreement on the other. It is hardly possible to disagree on the
one factor of the situation, the existence of horrid calamities, and
of deplorable abuses in the world of sex, evils of which surely the
average person knew rather little, and which were systematically
hidden from society, and above all, from the youth, by the traditional
method of reticence. To recognize these abscesses in the social
organism necessarily means for every decent being the sincere and
enthusiastic hope of removing them. There cannot be any dissent. It is
a holy war, if society fights for clean living, for protection of its
children against sexual ruin and treacherous diseases, against white
slavery and the poisoning of married life. But while there must be
perfect agreement about the moral duty of the social community, there
can be the widest disagreement about the right method of carrying on
this fight. The popular view of the day is distinctly that as these
evils were hidden from sight by the policy of silence, the right
method of removing them from the world must be the opposite scheme,
the policy of unveiled speech. The overwhelming majority has come to
this conclusion as if it were a matter of course. The man on the
street, and what is more surprising, the woman in the home, are
convinced that, if we disapprove of those evils, we must first of all
condemn the silence of our forefathers. They feel as if he who sticks
to the belief in silence must necessarily help the enemies of society,
and become responsible for the alarming increase of sexual affliction
and crime. They refuse to see that on the one side the existing facts
and the burning need for their removal, and on the other side the
question of the best method and best plan for the fight, are entirely
distinct, and that the highest intention for social reform may go
together with the deepest conviction that the popular method of the
present day is doing incalculable harm, is utterly wrong, and is one
of the most dangerous causes of that evi