[Footnote Q:  In England the Ministry of Health refuses to authorise the sale of v.d. preventives; refuses to authorise suitable printed directions; recommends immediate and thorough cleansing but refuses to explain methods or name disinfectants; and claims that persons who sell v.d. preventives as such, with directions, are liable to police prosecution and imprisonment. (Vide Circular 202, Ministry of Health, May 31st, 1921.) This may be mere “politics,” but it looks uncommonly like fooling with death.—­E.A.R.]

IV.—­COMPULSORY TREATMENT.

All women should be in favour of reasonable measures for ensuring the voluntary, and failing that the compulsory, treatment of venereal disease among men and among women.[R] It is troublesome to prevent a man getting disease if he is running into a pool of infection, and such cesspools should be cleaned up or cleared out of the community—­i.e., cured or quarantined.  Similarly, it is even more troublesome to prevent a woman becoming infected if she is having relationship with an active gonorrhoeic or syphilitic man, and such men should be treated voluntarily, or compulsorily if they refuse or neglect voluntary treatment.  Free treatment should be available to poor persons only; providing free treatment for all and sundry, whether they can afford to pay for it or not, is simply encouraging men and women to trust to luck rather than to disinfection.  This presupposes that the teaching of self-disinfection has been done confidently and authoritatively.  When prevention has been properly taught, then it is fair to penalise those who wilfully neglect to take precautions.  It was a great misfortune to the Anglo-Saxons when the Contagious Diseases Acts were abolished; instead they should have been improved and extended to both sexes.  Their abolition was the worst blow ever struck at marriage.  Fortunately, their main principles we are now beginning to re-enact in various Sexual Hygiene Acts.  The more “drastic”—­i.e., the more efficient—­these are, the more they should be supported by those who honestly desire to make marriage safe.

[Footnote R:  The argument that compulsory treatment would “drive the disease underground” is absurd.  Venereal disease is underground now.—­E.A.R.]

Apart from voluntary and compulsory treatment for venereal diseases, we certainly need voluntary and compulsory sterilisation of the unfit—­diseased and feeble-minded and otherwise unfit persons, who, whatever their other qualifications may be, are unsuitable as parents.  But whatever operation is decided upon, for men and for women, must in no way interfere with ordinary sexual activity; otherwise it will be promptly turned down by the general public, no matter what its medical advocates may say.  In marriage the partner to be sterilised is obviously the one who is unfit for parenthood.[S]