volumes upon it, and uncountable numbers of pamphlets, handbills
and inflammatory wall-cards, and yet it leaves the primary problem
unsolved, which is to say, the problem as to what is to be done
about the conflict between the celibacy enforced upon millions by
civilization and the appetites implanted in all by God. In the main, it
counsels yielding to celibacy, which is exactly as sensible as advising
a dog to forget its fleas. Here, as in other fields, I do not presume to
offer a remedy of my own. In truth, I am very suspicious of all
remedies for the major ills of life, and believe that most of them are
incurable. But I at least venture todiscuss the matter realistically,
and if what I have to say is not sagacious, it is at all events not
evasive. This, I hope, is something. Maybe some later investigator
will bring a better illumination to the subject.


It is the custom of The Free-Lance Series to print a paragraph or
two about the author in each volume. I was born in Baltimore,
September 12, 1880, and come of a learned family, though my
immediate forebears were business men. The tradition of this
ancient learning has been upon me since my earliest days, and I
narrowly escaped becoming a doctor of philosophy. My father's
death, in 1899, somehow dropped me into journalism, where I had
a successful career, as such careers go. At the age of 25 1 was the
chief editor of a daily newspaper in Baltimore. During the same
year I published my first book of criticism. Thereafter, for ten or
twelve years, I moved steadily from practical journalism, with its
dabbles in politics, economics and soon, toward purely aesthetic
concerns, chiefly literature and music, but of late I have felt a
strong pull in the other direction, and what interests me chiefly
today is what may be called public psychology, ie., the nature of the