The present writer, for one, being a private individual, the servant of
the public, and responsible to no body smaller than the public, has long
declined and will continue to decline to join the hateful conspiracy of
silence, in virtue of which these daily horrors lie at the door of the
most honoured and respected individuals and professions in the
community. More especially at the doors of the Church and the medical
profession there lies the burden of shame that, as great organized
bodies having vast power, they should concern themselves, as they daily
do, with their own interests and honour, without realizing that where
things like these are permitted by their silence, their honour is
smirched beyond repair in whatever Eyes there be that regard.
I propose therefore to say in this chapter that which at the least
cannot but have the effect of saving at any rate a few girls somewhere
throughout the English-speaking world from one or other or both of these
diseases, and their consequences. Let those only who have ever saved a
single human being from either syphilis or gonorrh[oe]a dare to utter a
word against the plain speaking which may save one woman now.
The task may be much lightened by referring the reader to a play by the
bravest and wisest of modern dramatists, M. Brieux, more especially
because the reader of "Les Avaries" will be enabled to see the sequence
of causation in its entirety.
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