+Compulsory Treatment.+—­Compulsory provisions in the law form the third debatable feature of a modern program against syphilis.  The Scandinavian countries have adopted it, and in them a patient who does not take treatment can be made to do so.  If he is in a contagious condition, he can be committed to a hospital for treatment.  If he infects another, knowing himself to have a venereal disease, he is subject, not to fine, but to a long term of imprisonment.  The West Australian law is even more efficient than the Scandinavian in the vigor with which it supplies teeth for the bite.  The penalties for violations of its provisions are so heavy as to most effectually discourage would-be irresponsibles.  At the other end of the scale we find Great Britain relying thus far solely upon the provision of adequate treatment, and trusting to the enlightenment of patients and the education of public sentiment to induce them to continue treatment until cured.  Italy has, in the same way, left the matter to the judgment of the patient.  The Medical Association of Munich, Germany, in a recent study has subscribed to compulsory treatment along the same lines as the West Australia act, although thus far enforcement has been confined to military districts.  The program for disbanding of the German army after the war, however, includes, under Blaschko’s proposals, compulsion and surveillance carried to the finest details.  A conservative summary of the situation seems to justify the belief that measures of compulsion will ultimately form an essential part of a fully developed legal code for the control of syphilis.  The reasons for this belief have been extensively reviewed in the discussion of the nature of the disease itself (pages 104-105).  On the whole, however, the method of Great Britain in looking first to the provision for adequate diagnosis and treatment, and then to the question as to who will not avail himself of it, is a logical mode of attacking the question, and as it develops public sentiment in its favor, will also pave the way for a sentiment which will stand back of compulsion if need be, and save it from being a dead letter.

+Backwardness of the United States in the Movement.+—­It will be apparent, from the foregoing review of the world movement against syphilis, and the essentials of a public policy toward the disease, that the majority of our efforts in this direction have been decidedly indirect.  We have no national program of which we as a people are conscious.  It is all we can do to arouse a sentiment to the effect that something ought to be done.  In these critical times we must mobilize for action in this direction with as much speed at least as we show in developing an army and navy, slow though we are in that.  To limit our efforts to the passing of freak state legislation regulating the price of a Wassermann to determine the fitness of a person for marriage, when both Wassermann test itself, and Wassermann test as evidence of fitness