from generation to generation, creating for each in turn the worst
possible conditions for true life. It is utterly unreasonable to hope
that we shall ever as a nation attain to moral health until this evil
has been dealt with. It seems to matter little whether such people are
married or unmarried; in both conditions they make havoc of sexual
life, and poison society.


_Drink_


I have kept to the last the social evil which more than all the others
put together tends to produce sexual immorality. As I have already
said, it is a comparatively rare thing for a man to "go wrong" for the
first time when he is entirely sober. It is Bacchus that conducts men
into the courts of Venus. Mr. Flexner, who for scientific reasons made
a comprehensive study of Prostitution in Europe, reports that in every
country the whole traffic is "soaked in drink." There are inhibitions
in our humanity which make sexual vice repulsive to our taste, and
there are few who can get past these inhibitions until alcohol has
deadened their better feelings. Man after man has told me that it was
after some festive night when he had taken more wine than ever before
that he first fell. Unmarried mothers have told me that what happened
on the night that was fatal to them was that they were cajoled into
taking champagne or whisky, and after that could not well remember what
took place.

It is not too much to say that until we have grappled with the drink
evil in our midst we cannot possibly hope to master this greater evil
which follows on the heels of intemperance. This one consideration