This need not discourage us too much. It will not serve to leave matters to official action alone. If the victory against venereal diseases is to be won, strong signs of general interest must be shown. More even than this is necessary. The interest shown must be of an enlightened character. I feel it is urgent to emphasise this need for wise, and not hasty, action. Women have of late been taking a quite new concern in sexual questions, in particular in venereal diseases, so intimately connected with their interests. This is as it should be. But I have been forced to the knowledge that this interest, unbacked by wide knowledge and still more by experience of the facts of life, often leads them into folly. The possession of the vote by women has been expected to achieve immediate magical effects; it has been forgotten that women voters would be neither united in their aims nor possessed of the political capacity which would enable them infallibly to gain all for which they wished. Women ought not to hope to solve the ancient, fierce enigmas which have vexed mankind in every modern civilised society.
In my opinion, the greatest cause of error in women’s judgment arises from the tendency (doubtless due to what their sex has suffered) to throw the whole blame for sexual sins on men. Some women carry sex antagonism like a flag, which they flourish in every wind. These are, of course, a small minority; but the majority of women fail to take a wide, sane view of both the question of prostitution and that of venereal diseases.
Let me give an illustration. I recently attended a meeting where a paper was read on the Report of the Venereal Disease Commission. The reader of the paper, being a woman doctor, took the wise view that the most important matter was the cure of the disease. In the discussion that followed, it was plainly evident that few of the audience agreed with her. These were women who had read about, and to some limited extent thought and studied these questions. Yet the general view was that _the men ought to be punished_. One speaker, who stated that she was married, said that _no true woman could or ought to forgive a husband who had become infected with venereal disease_.