After all, human progress is deeply indebted to a study of
imperfections, and the counsels of despair, if not full of seasoned
wisdom, are at least fertile in suggestion and a desperate spur to
action. Sympathetic knowledge is the only way of approach to any human
problem, and the line of least resistance into the jungle of human
wretchedness must always be through that region which is most thoroughly
explored, not only by the information of the statistician, but by
sympathetic understanding. We are daily attaining the latter through
such authors as Sudermann and Elsa Gerusalem, who have enabled their
readers to comprehend the so-called "fallen" woman through a skilful
portrayal of the reaction of experience upon personality. Their realism
has rescued her from the sentimentality surrounding an impossible
Camille quite as their fellow-craftsmen in realism have replaced the
weeping Amelias of the Victorian period by reasonable women transcribed
from actual life.

The treatment of this subject in American literature is at present in
the pamphleteering stage, although an ever-increasing number of short
stories and novels deal with it. On the other hand, the plays through
which Bernard Shaw constantly places the truth before the public in
England as Brieux is doing for the public in France, produce in the
spectators a disquieting sense that society is involved in
commercialized vice and must speedily find a way out. Such writing is
like the roll of the drum which announces the approach of the troops
ready for action.

Some of the writers who are performing this valiant service are related
to those great artists who in every age enter into a long struggle with
existing social conditions, until after many years they change the
outlook upon life for at least a handful of their contemporaries. Their