Safe Marriage | Page 4

future
husbands and fathers of the nation--and "The sins of the fathers are
visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation." All
this would be impossible if women generally would recognise the
primary fact that because a man is immoral that it is no reason why he
should become syphilitic. We all want to abolish sin, but failing that we
must cease wanting to poison the sinner. We must actively work to
save him from the penalties of his folly, for that is the only way in
which we can save his victims and succeed ultimately in "Making
Marriage Safe."
Similarly every effort should be made to prevent women becoming
diseased, no matter how immoral they may be. The prostitute is very
often a woman of peculiar mentality or overdeveloped animal instincts;

and many women are driven to prostitution by drink and poverty. The
prostitute class is largely recruited from mentally and morally deficient
girls, who are themselves the offspring of syphilitic or alcoholic parents.
Prostitution is the effect--not the cause--of anti-social acts and
conditions. We must remedy the causes of these before we can hope to
remove the effects. Under present social conditions, attempting to
abolish prostitution by shutting up tolerated houses is just as idle as
attempting to lower the temperature of a room by smashing the
thermometer. All we can do is to make and keep these women clean. If
we decline to do even that, then diseased women will succeed in
contaminating our men much faster than we can instruct the men in
sexual cleanliness.[B]
[Footnote B: Diseased women will continue to cater for men so long as
they are left free to do so, but as knowledge grows their clients will
tend to be limited to diseased men. Once men clearly understand that
every casual connection is a risk of disease, they will certainly tend to
run fewer risks.--E.A.R.]
And again, just as the medical prevention of venereal disease was not
proposed, and has not been applied for the purpose of fostering or
condoning promiscuous intercourse,[C] so the conscious control of
fecundity by contraception must not be applied in such a way as to
lessen the proportion of well-born citizens in the nation taken as a
whole. Birth-control applied only by the responsible classes of the
community combined with indiscriminate fecundity among the
irresponsible masses, must inevitably lead to the lowering of the
general average in character, brains and physique. It is a form of
reverse selection--the responsible being out-bred by the irresponsible.
What is wanted is the general application of birth-control by voluntary
contraception, and the particular application of voluntary and
compulsory sterilisation of the feeble-minded and unfit.
[Footnote C: My own experience among the troops quite convinced me
that the more thoroughly and carefully self-disinfection was taught, the
less immorality there was. It was impossible to teach self-disinfection
properly without at the same time instilling a living sense of danger

into the minds of men and women; and this danger-sense certainly led
to more self-restraint.--E.A.R.]
Enthusiastic advocates of birth-control claim it as a means of
_improving the race_. It is not necessarily anything of the kind. You
cannot improve a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle by letting all the
individuals breed; whether each individual has a small number or a
large number of offspring makes comparatively little difference. The
way to improve the flock or herd is to breed only from the best and
eliminate the unfit as breeding material. Changes in environment may
improve or deteriorate the individuals of one generation, but such
changes are not inheritable, excepting in the case of venereal disease.
Syphilis, e.g., may damage the germ-cells of a man's body, and thus
lead to his procreating diseased and damaged offspring--idiots,
imbeciles, mental or moral deficients, and so forth, who unfortunately
are fertile. Thus the prevention of venereal disease is a eugenic force. It
is in fact the only eugenic force in operation at present. Generally
speaking, it is the well-developed and high-spirited and enterprising
young men who travel most, and who, therefore, are most likely to
contract and spread venereal disease. They come in contact with a
much larger number of women than those who stay at home instead of
wandering abroad. These well-to-do young travellers often marry the
finest of our women, and later in life damage or sterilise them through
latent or chronic venereal disease. Hence many one-child
marriages--due not to the use of contraceptives, but to the action of the
gonococcus transferred to the body of the wife.
But there is this hope. It is among the mentally alert and well-informed
men and women that birth-control is first understood and applied, and it
is among this very same class that the medical prevention of venereal
disease is also first understood and