It is not found in the estimates which have reached
Hirschfeld that the French groups show a smaller proportion
of homosexual persons than the German groups, and
a Japanese group comes out near to the general average
for the whole. Various authorities, especially
Germans, believe that homosexuality is just as common
in France as in Germany.[107] Saint-Paul ("Dr. Laupts"),
on the other hand, is unable to accept this view.
As an army surgeon who has long served in Africa he
can (as also Rebierre in his
Joyeux et demifous)
bear witness to the frequency of homosexuality among
the African battalions of the French army, especially
in the cavalry, less so in the infantry; in the French
army generally he finds it rare, as also in the general
population.[108] Naecke is also inclined to believe
that homosexuality is rarer in Celtic lands, and in
the Latin countries generally, than in Teutonic and
Slavonic lands, and believes that it may be a question
of race.[109] The question is still undecided.
It is possible that the undoubted fact that homosexuality
is less conspicuous in France and the other Latin countries
than in Teutonic lands, may be due not to the occurrence
of a smaller proportion of congenital inverts in the
former lands, but mainly to general difference in
temperament and in the social reaction.[110] The French
idealize and emphasize the place of women to a much
greater degree than the Germans, while at the same
time inverts in France have much less occasion than
in Germany to proclaim their legal grievances.
Apart from such considerations as these it seems very
doubtful whether inborn inversion is in any considerable
degree rarer in France than in Germany.
As to the frequency of homosexuality in England[111]
and the United States there is much evidence.
In England its manifestations are well marked for
those whose eyes have once been opened. The manifestations
are of the same character as those in Germany, modified
by social and national differences, and especially
by the greater reserve, Puritanism, and prudery of
England.[112] In the United States these same influences
exert a still greater effect in restraining the outward
manifestations of homosexuality. Hirschfeld,
though so acute and experienced in the investigation
of homosexuality, states that when visiting Philadelphia
and Boston he could scarcely detect any evidence of
homosexuality, though he was afterward assured by
those acquainted with local conditions that its extension
in both cities is “colossal.” There
have been numerous criminal cases and scandals in
the United States in which homosexuality has come to
the surface, and the very frequently occurring cases
of transvestism or cross-dressing in the States seem
to be in a large proportion associated with homosexuality.