Document 6427987

I
Annual Meeting of the American Birth Control League
February, 1929
Twenty Cents
REVIEW
Children of Clunce, Not of Chance
Havelock Ellis
number
Ap@eciations by:
Hirschfeld
Forel
Huxley
Hamilton
LOW
Margueritte
~olsti
Mrs. Pethick Lawrence
and Others
Barnes
Krutch
THE
AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE.
INC
MARGARET SANGER, Farndsr
104 FlFTH AVENUE. NEW YORK CITY
TelephonesCheisur 890143902
OFFICERS
MRS F ROBERTSON JONES
Prsndsnt
MR.¶ LEWIS L DELAFIELD
Vtce-Pvsasdsnt
MR J NOAH H S L E E
MRS ANNIE G PORRITT
Becrslarv
MRS WARREN THORPE
Trsaaursr
A r n r h t Trswursr
B O A R D O F D I R E C T O R S
MRS
MRS
MRS
MRS
FRANCES B ACKERMANN
REV WILLIAM H GARTH
ZACHARIAH BELCHER
STUART MUDD, M D
RICHARD BILLINGS
MRS JULIET BARRETT RUBLEE
DEXTER BLAGDEN
MRS ROBERT HUSE
Ezecutms
MARGARET SANGER
BENJAMIN T TILrON, M D
MHS WALTER TIMME
IRA S WILE, M D
Bscrstow
CLINICAL RESEARCH BUREAU
DR JAMES F COOPER
MARGARET SANGER
Pedlcal D~rector
Dwsctor
DR HANYAH BJ STONE
Chisf of titab
NATIONAL COUNCIL
C L E R Q Y Y E R
Rev Ernest Caldeeott, N Y
Rabbr Rudolph I Coffee, Ph D , Calif
Rev P u p Frick, N Y
Rabbl Sldney E Goldstein, N Y
Rev Oscar B Hawes, N J
Rahhl L o u Mann, XU
Durn Tbyrsa W Amos, Pa
Leon J Cole, PhD, Wlse
Edward M East, B 9, P b D Mass.
Pranklrn H ~ i d d i n ~ PhD,
s.
N Y
Samuel J Holmes, Ph D, Calif
RosweU H Johnson, M S, Pa
E C Lindeman, P h D , N Y
Rev Karl ReUand, N Y
Rev Edgar S Wiers, N J
Rev L Griswold WUliamq P a
BCIERTIBTB
.
Joseph L Baer, I U
James F Cooper, N Y
John Favdl, IU
Al~ceHamdton, Mess
Frederick C Heckel. N Y
Donald R Hooker, Md
Alice Stone Blackaell, Mass
James E Brooks, N J
Jessle P Condlt, N J
Herbert Croly, N Y
Mra Belle De Rivera, N J
Theodore D n s e r , N Y
C C Llttle, D Sc, Mlch
W h m McDouwll, Ph D, Masa
James G ~ r r d h m n ,W D , N Y
Wm. F Oghurn, PhD, IL
Walter B Rtkin, PhD, N Y
P I i Y E I C I A R 8
Amella R KeUar, Iod
S Adolphus Knopf, N Y
Lewrcnce Lothrop, N Y
Earl Lothmp, N Y
Eluabeth Lord Love, N J
Adolph Meyer, Md
O T H E R P R O F E B B I O R A L B
Ernest Gruenfnn. N Y
~lorene' ~ a y a HUIes,
z
DeL
Slndair Lewis, N Y
Judge Ben Lindsey, Colo
Owen Losejoy, N Y
Robert M Lovett, 111
James M Maurer, P a
L A Y
M E Y B E R B
Mrs John Allen Dougherty, D C
Mrs Ernest R Adee, N Y
I r s Boyd Dudley, N Y
Mrs Oak- Ames, Mass
Raymond H Arnold, Calif
Mrs Slmmn Ford, N Y
George Blumenthal, N Y
Mrs Kate Crane G a r b Calif
Mrs
Robert B Gregory, I U
Mrs Robert Perkins Bass, N H
Miss Florence Halsey, N J
Mrs Walter L Benson, IU
MIS H G HUI, Calif
Mrs John E Bemind. N Y
Mrs Fenley Hunter, N Y
&well Brentano, N Y'
Mrs. Wllllam Swain Jamzs, Calrf
Mrs John Scott Bmwnmg, N Y
Mrs W E Cannon, Mass
Mrs Helen Hartley Jenkins, Conn.
Mr and Mra Thomas L Cbadbourne, N Y Mrs Pierre Jay, N Y
WiUiam Hamlin ChUds, N Y
Mrs Otto Kahn, N Y
Mrs Stephen Clark, N Y
Mrs W W Knapp, N Y
Mrs James Lee Laidlaw, N Y
Mrs Frank I Cobh, N Y
Mrs Arthur L. Lawrenee, N Y
Mrs John Dey, N J
Horatlo M PoUoek, PhD, N Y
Lothmp Stoddard, PhD, Masa
J E W Wallin, PhD, Ohio
John B Watson, PhD, N Y
Walter F Wlllem, W D , N Y
A B Wolfe, PhD, Ohio
Abraham Myerson, M d
Wm Allen Pusep, IIl
Ralph Reed, Ohio
Aamn J RosanoE, Cslif
John B SoUey, Jr, N Y
Hannah M Stone, N Y
Kenneth Taylor, N Y
Elisabeth Sevcrn, N Y
Mary Shaw, N Y
Florence Guertin Tuffle, N Y
Ruth Vincent, Colo
Mrs Albert Walker, Tcrao
Mary Winsor, P a
Mrs
Mrs
Mrs
Mrs
Mrs
Mrs
Mrs
Mrs
Mrs
Mrs
Mrs
Mrs
Mrs
Frank Ibl LeavItt, N Y
Edward A Lingenfelter, Iowa
Stanley McCormiek, N Y
WUIlam A MeGraw, Pieh.
L Newman, Utah
Enoeh Raub, Pa
C C Rumsey, N Y
W F Spangler, Ind.
T J Swanton, N Y
Shelley Tolhurst, CalU
J Bishop Vandwer, N Y
Norman deR Wh~tehom,N Y
Pope Yurtman, Pa
MORE REASONS
TO OUR DECAUX;UE--Our Ten
The first of these
for
BIRTH CONTROL
Comrnandlng Reasons for Bmth Control
- already oven,
we add
two more
IS
The Promotion of Morality
(Moralrty rs promoted b y Bsrth Control rn two mays
In the broader and more general meafwng of t h word, lam
Isfe, freed both from snhtb%twnsand from worry about health and ecolunnw pressure, rmll tend t o produce more normal famrlres and t h w rawe t h ethrcol standards of t h race I n the more specral aspect of the word, as s e d w d
sty, Bsrth Control zmll attack the nutrtutun, of pzortrtutum and mcreore thc stabdtty of the famdy)
Read what
-
-
aothonhes say
B m h Control wlll prevent prostltutlon because young people wall be able to marry early and watt untd
thelr lncomes a r e suffic~entbefore havrng ch~ldren,and wrves w ~ l lbe freed from the hauntlng fear of pregnancy
whlch hovers over a woman from month to month and frequently drwes husbands to prostlmtes
To
MABGABET
SANGER
a race o f
well-born
There Is, I belleve, no other factor that contr~butesmore--I thlnk I might aay as much-to sexual rmmoral
~ t ythan the s e e k ~ n gby marrred men of that sexual g r a t ~ f i c a t ~ ofrom
n
~ l l ~ c~ntercourae
tt
that they have found lack
Ing m marrled lrfe And this sltoauon a r ~ s e slargely a s a result of drfficult~es and anxletres that come from
efforts a t c o n t ~ ~ ~ e n cThere
c
could he no greater contr~hutronto the moralrty of the world, as well as to ~ t happl
s
ness, than would be the removal of thls unhappy state that mterferes so greatly w ~ t hmanta1 happlnesa
WILLIAM
ALLENPUSEY,M D
essential that
the functlon be
Only through a n mternatlonal B l n h Control movement can we Iwk forward wrth confidence to the extlnc
tton of the three chlef evrls of human hfe-War,
Poverty and P r o s t l ~ t ~ o n
ALICEDBYSDALE
VICXEBY
elevated t o a
There a r e a good many who, havrng t r ~ e dto lwe up to a n exalted beltcf In contmence, frequently lapse by
to prostjtutlon, exposrng themselves rn the latter case to the dangers of venereal dlsease and the pang8
of a gudty c o n x ~ e n c e
RACRELLE
YABBOS,
MD
resorting
nrty and thls 1s
long as conceptlon remalns a
m a t t e r of
chance
Declarat~on of
Pnncrple8
of
A m e r ~ c a nB l n h
Control k a g u e
Even ~n irregular sexual h f e there are, I belleve good grounds for the advocacy of Btrth Control It IS a sad
fact, but nevertheless a fact, that under the c o n d m o n ~that modern c~vrl~zatron
sets up, sexual rmmorallty a common I do not mean to Intunate, and I do not belleve that this 1s not altogether deplorable I t u much commoner
ln men than m women, but rt 1s by oo means restrlcted ln women to those who a r e beyond the bounds of human
protcctron or of humane efforts for thelr care
Under the standards of morahty whmh society aen up, but
does not observe, a n dleg~umateh r t h IS a fact for whrch there can be no atonement, elther by the mother o r the
c b ~ l d Wlth the sexual ~ n s t ~ n cast ~t 19, w ~ t bcustom stlmulat~ngtbls appehte by every suggesuon prurtent Ingenutty can devlae, wlth the posslblllty of marrlage refused to many women with the atonement for a n llleglt~mate
chdd beyond any pposs~b~lrty,
the women of any mtelhgence or decent lnstlnct who find themselves In thls condmon
-and there are plenty of women of t h sort
~ who find themselves rn t h e cond~tlon-are confronted by only one
possibrl~tyand that 1s abortton T h e aggregate of human agony that 1s the result of t h ~ ssltuatlon 19 beyond any
computatlon I am not saylng In order to avord argument, that these women a r e not dcservmg of them agony,
but I would call attentron to the fact tbat zt would be better for souety ~f the sltuatmn were handled d~fferently
WILLIAM
ALLENPUSEY,
MD
T h e relation of man and woman, so f a r from berng evd w ~ t h mthe strlct llmm of monogamy and wrthln
the restramt tbat every man 13 bound to put upon all hlr appctltes, 1s not e v ~ lhut 1s good and thls doctrlne that
people should abstarn 23 wrong and mrsch~evousand rs c c n a m to lead to the shattering of homes
-
LORDBUCKMASTEB
FEBRUARY, 1929
VOLXI11
CONTENTS
MORE REASONS The Promotton o f Moralrty
36
EDITORIAGHaveloek Ell=, by Margarst Sangsr
ST
Annual Meetmg o f the League
SM
H A V E M C K ELLIS
As I Understand H m , by X a g n w Harachfeld
39
The P w e o f Havelock Ellrs, by Huntmgton Caww
40
The Prophet o f Ratlonal Freedom, by Edgar Wood
Pangborn
4
Sexual Relatlvet, by Ednard C Lmdsman
40
An Appreclatron, by Emmelsne Psthwk Lmmsnce
46
Phlloso~herand Suentlst. bv Percv L Clark. J r
4.5
~ r u t o r Revlslted,
i
by ~ k i o ~ne i s r r o n
.
46
L~berator,hy Mary P a t n m WJIcoclu
47
A Gutde t o Our Generation, by Harry E l m a Barnea 60
H s Servlce t o Humanity, by Rudolf Hoktt
61
A Gulde to the Perplexed, by LlawsNyn Joma
6a
A V E H A V E M C K ELLIS
From Vlctor Marguentte, France
From August Forel, Switzerland
Jul~anS Hudey-Ernest
Caldeeott-Mary AnstinJoseph Wood Krutch-Harland W Long, M D -Hugh
de Sellncourt-Van W y c k Brooks-Aaron J Rosan05 M D 4 Mdls Wltham
46-4!3
OBITUARY
U
MOTHERHOOD IN B O N D A G M o m e Appmiatrons
Norman Thomm-Odatte Kue-Fro&
Kwchmev
61
BOOK R E V I E W S
S t u d m o f Sex, Volume V I I , by Hwelock EUu-Q
V
62
Hamilton M.D
Havelock Ellls and the Drama-Harold Chdd
M
Impress~onsand Comments, by Haoslock Ellu--H P M
Bankruptcy of Yawlage, by V F Caleerton-Wayno
IU
Eeana
-BOOKS RECEIVED
64
CORRESPONDENCE
1111
EPILOGUE, A poem, by Hwelock &Ilia
65
A PORTRAIT OF HAVELOCK ELLIS, by H a n y
66
Eanasn
S U N S H I N E A N D A I R , by Jorsph Colbna, Y.D
56
ELLIS' V I S I O N OF PARADISE, from ''The Pmblem o f
Race Regeneratron"
66
PROSPECT A N D RETROSPECT (Annual Meeting o f the
Amerrcnn Bmth Control League)
67
N E W S NOTES-International-New Y o r k
68
Penmylvama
England
69
Ireland - I t d y
60
-
BIRTH CONTROL REVIEW
MAQNUS HIRBCHFELD u one of tho great adz p.gcihologu&
o f Qsrmany E s u facadsr of t b Inatatut fur Be&
wu;enachoft and rharsr wtth Augwt Forel and H m s b c k
Ellu tho pre.dsncy of the World Lsagw for Semal Reform.
AUGUST F O R E L a Smua studant of aee wam one of the firat
to m t s on t h e ~ saubpeta for tho mtelligmt g s m r d publw
V I C T O R MARQUERITTE of P a w u a r e f o m r and ~ e s l u t
He u author of tho asnea of nowela called Verr Is Bonheur"
of whzch the firat ' T o n Corpr Eat a To*" u baed upon the
necernty of age educatwn and the nght to Bwth Control
RUDOLF HOLSTI, ez-Formgn Mmuter of Ftnlard u psmro~ n delegats
t
to the League of Nabona at Q e l ~ ~and
a
deputy reprerantotme to tho C o u d of tho Lsagw
MRS E X M E L I N E PETHICK L A W R E N C E , prendmt of the
Woman a Freedom League tr OM of the groat lslulara of the
Englwh auffrage and fomnaut moe&ent
M A R Y P A T R I C I A WILLCOCKS u an Englvh noeslut and
ontac, author of "Toward N w HocLMy" and"BsLwesn tho
Old World and the New'
H A R O L D CHILD an Engluhman and rpscid w n t s r for T b
T t m a , u post, nowlut and ldmarg d l c
J MILLS WZTEAM an EngIuh noeslut u author of " S m f d
Bmntr",
The WwuUoatrmd: slc
JULZAN 8 H U X L E Y u a zoologut of Kmnga Collegs London
and author of manta& rtud~ss He u a c o n t d u t o r to tho
p e r precmtatwn of adsnce publuhsd by Dutton.
HUQH D E SBLINCOURT u an Engluh novelut, author o f
' O m Ltttle Boy'
Q V HAMILTON, M.D u a paychmtwt and author of d A n
Introducbon to Paycho-pathology " A. dwsctor of the Depzrtmml of Paycho-kolopd Rerearch of tho Bureau o f
S o d d Hygtsns (Ham Yorkj he hm, jnat completed a 'Reasarch m Momage "
AARON J ROSANOFP, M D u a psychwtmat of Coltforma
and an acttes ;upporter of the Btrth Control mw-n:
H A R L A N D Y LONG M.D a paychtatrut of PJtabwg hm
been a Isfelong rtudent of marnags and I05 problsmm
E R N E S T CALDECOTT D D
Schsnectady, Nsm York
18
a Urntanan minuter of
M A R Y AUSTIN u a wnter of noeelr and poetrg aa mall or u
Isedtng ruffragaat and an ethnologut and authong on t l b
Zndtana of S c u B Wsatern Umted Stotsr
HOUSTON PETERBON ~natructori n philotophy at C o l u m h
U n n e r t y u author of a bwgraphy of Hwelock EUu
m5LUIHELl B Y
The Amerlcan Birth Control League, Ine
N E W Y O R K CITY
H A R R Y E L M E R B A R N E S profsasor of Boctology at Smdh
College, u sdttor and author of many ronolopicd aLudtsr
E C LINDEMAN, educator ~ o m worker
d
and .mntsr lectors+
SANGEB,
EdttCW
ANNIE
G POPRITT,
Amstant E d t t w
M n a ~SUMNEE
BOYD,
Manugang Edatw
&BGABET
The BIRTH CONlROL REVIEW 1. pIlbluhed
on the h a t of the month
Smsle Coplu--Twenty Cent.
Two D o h
G ~ d and
a Fo$2 25
2
O U R CONTRIBUTORS
PAGE
104 FIFTH A V E N U E
No
Yeu
es+4..
Entered aa S s o n d Class Matter March 11, 1918, at the Posta c e at New York, N Y , under the Act o f March 3, 1879
at tho Now School for Boml Research and the N w York
School for Socud Work u on tho edstonnl ataff of NOW
Republw and other magcarnsr He u author of " S o d
Ducovsry "
HUNTINQTON C A I R N S V A N W Y C K BROOK6 JOSEPH
WOOD KRUTCH and L L E W E L L Y N JONES are ltterare
c n k r /or ruch p e f w d t c d ~a, the Now Republtc Tho Dtd,
The Bookman The Chrcago Eesnsng Poat, The Saturdag
Remem, and Tho Natson Llewellyn Jomr u tnatructor t n
Chtcago Unmsrmty and Joaeph Wood Kmtch u matructor
m Columbta U n m e m t y and author of "Edgar Allen Posn
PERCY, L C L A R K , J R u srutructor m Corns11 Unwsrraty
E D f f A R WOOD PANQBORN u a mntsr on marnaga problema
Subscribers are urged to send nobes of chance of addreas at lemst three weeks before st taku effect
Birth Control Review
F E B R U A R Y , 1929
EDITORIAL
A
G A I N as February comes around, we rejolce
to honor the Prophet and L~berator,Havelock Ellis Thls year we make a speclal effort m
the B~rthdaynumber, for ~tcommemorates hls seventleth awversary, and his entrance on the e~ghth
decade of beaut~fuland enormously useful livmg
The first tribute comes from the heart and pen of
Margaret Sanger
Havelock Ellis
0
U R generatlon does not look for samts who
are regarded as messengers from a superhuman realm, but for salnts whom ~t can honor
as the most human of men" So declares Stefan
Zwelg, whose lllummatmg stud~esof Tolstoy, Casanova and Stendahl have recently been publlshed m
thls country It m ~ g h tbe nearer the truth to say
that our generat~ondoes not look for samts a t all
Confronted wlth a samt, how many of t h s twentleth century would recognize him? How many
have? I n actwe and vlolent revolt agamst tradlt~onaland orthodox rehglon, we have developed a
phobla for all thmgs that even suggest the old rehg~on-even ~ t vocabulary
s
"Samt" or "samt11ness" are words m bad odor wlth us Thev mean
somebody or somethmg excesslvely-or even hypocnticallv-sanctlmon~ous F o r the maiontv of the
younger generat~onthe "samt" connote: a holy man
or woman untouched by the problems or the suffermgs of our workaday world But there are certam
herow hves, certam glants of the spmt, a few radlant personal~tlestoday whose example compels us
to resort to the now d~scardedvocabulary of prmltive r e l ~ g ~ o nCertam men y e can only adequately
character~zeas saznts Havelock Ellls s one-to
me the foremost-of these contemporary samts
What 1s a samtv How can we define a samt
w~thoutevokmg the symbols or the Images of ms t ~ t u t ~ o nrelig~onv
al
"When we talk of a hfe as
samtlv," declares Stefan Zwelg, "we mean that ~t
1s herolcal m the sense of entlre devot~onto a rehg~ouslyconceived ldeal " I am not q u ~ t esat~sfied
w ~ t hthat word "rell~ously" It confuses rather
than clarifies I would rather define the samt as
one who rad~atesspmtual truth and energy I see
hlm llvlng m a realm above and beyond the shoutmg and the tumult of the day's "news " Current
events do not trouble hml Captams and kmgs
come and go L d l ~ p u t ~ awarrlors
n
strut thew hour
upon the world stage, and boundary lmes between
natlons are made and unmade The salnt takes no
actwe part m t h ~ external
s
traffickmg Yet he does
not dwell apart m an wory tower of h ~ own
s
constructlon
D
E T A C H E D as he seems to be from the pam
and suffermg of our workaday world, Havelock Ells has penetrated profoundly mto the pers~stentproblems of the human race Nothmg human
1s ahen to h ~ sympathy
s
and char~ty The knowledge of thls samt 1s broad and deep hls w~sdom~s
even deeper H e makes no str~dent,blatant effort
to shout out hls message to the world H e makes
no rash promlses of eternal salvation or happmess
But gradual1y , and m ever-mcreasmg numbers,
men and women pause to M e n to hls serene volce
There 1s Indeed something m~raculousm the manner m whlch men and women m all parts of our
world have stopped to "llsten m" to the volce of
Havelock E l l ~ s Here 1s a phenomenon far more
amazmg than the ach~evementsof radlo-act~vlty
Desp~teall t h e obstacles and obstruct~onsthat
have hmdered hls expression, lus truth has filtered
through to the mmds ready to recelve ~t It 1s not
the place here to attempt to define hls "message"~f mdeed there can be s a ~ dto be any defin~te"message", other than that of lzfe more abundant, attamed through a more complete understandmg of
ourselves and unruffled chanty toward all the vanat~onsof whlch t h ~ all-too-human
s
race has demonstrated Itself capable Ellls 1s much more than a
“philosopher of love", as he was described by Houston Peterson m the b~ographypubllshed last year
Bwth Control Revzew
I t is now a little over seven years since the League
came into existence under the courageous leadership of Margaret Sanger A t that time - the late
fall of 1921-there was not m the United States a
single clinic or medical center where poor women
could go for advlce It was difficult to secure any
discussion of the subject, for the very name was
tabu in pohte society, and many even of the supporters of the cause were ashamed to be seen carrymg Birth Control hterature, or to display it on
them tables The progress smce those days is gigantic A s regards Birth Control, we seem to have
emerged from the dark of the middle ages mto the
T O H A V E L O C K E L L I S more than any other light of open discussion and scientific benisons Nor
contemporary, we owe our concept of that has the influence of the American Birth Control
kingdom of God which is really within us, that m- League been co~lfinedto this country I n England
ner world which hides all our inherent potentialities the Neo-Malthusian League had been in existence
for joy as well as suffering Thanks to his serene before 1921, but even there, with its older organizaand heroic assertion of fundamental truths, we re- tion, the insp~rationof Margaret Sanger's camalize today, as never before in the history of human- paign was felt m a qu~ckeningof interest and in a
ity, that happiness must be the fruit of our own ready adoption of the new name which she had
act~vity,our own attitude toward life, and that it is gwen to the movement Birth Control has become
m no way dependent upon the rewards of the fights the universally recogmzed inscription on the stanof external fortune T h spir~tualenergy which dard of the movement m England as well as here,
Havelock Ellis has for so many years radiated is and the carrying of Birth Control information to
thus a merciful, beneficient, and, above all, a fert~le the poor by means of c h i c s has been adopted as the
policy of the Birth Control workers in all countries
and life-giving force
Like Saint Francis of Assisi, Havelock Ellis has which have been aroused to mterest in the subject
awakened us to a new life and a new world W e
can never-even if by some inexplicable stubbornness we would-turn back mto that cabined and
confined world m which a t the beginning of his
caieer, he found himself, and which by the quiet
E R Y little time was spent at the annual meetand progressive assertion of his own values, he has
mg m surveymg this progress or the triumph$
done so much to dissolve The truth is that since of the past A n d rightly so, for m spite of all that
the world recognition of Havelock Ellis, we are all has been done, there are still vast fields untouched
different people today Unafraid and alone he was even in America There are now m the United
one of the first to strike boldly as a ploneer mto States, D r Stone of the Clmical Research Bureau
an uncharted jungle of human nature Anyone told the meeting, 28 c h c s or maternal centers
less than a saint would have fallen Havelock Ellis where contraceptive advice is given to poor mothers
riot only penetrated unhaimed through that purga- These are distributed over 10 States, which means
tory, but has led the rest of us with him Taboos that there are still 38 States entirely without any
have been destroyed Fears have vanished And such facilities for famly control It means that
even though practically everything still remains to there are still tens of millions of American mothers
be done of the vabt labors of the twentieth century who have no possibility of securmg the relief and
Heicules, we have the example of this modem saint freedom which ought to be the r ~ g h of
t each one of
to encourage and to insplre us for decades to come them It means, moreover, that the people in these
38 States have not been aroused to the need of Birth
Control, that the majority of them know nothing
about it, and if they have heard some rumors of ~ t ,
they probably confuse contraception with abortion
This is the work that lles before the League to
educate the people as to what Birth Control means
N O T H E R landmark in the Birth Control for the famly, for the nat~on,for the world a t large,
movement was reached on January 17th, when to create a demand for Blrth Control c h i c s and
the members of the American Birth Control League assist in establishmg them, and to clear the field
assembled m New York for their Annual Meeting from obstructive laws and ignorant opposition
H e is more than a psychologist preoccupied with
probing into sexual abnormalities Llke Francis
of Assisi he has opened the eyes of the spirit to
new and heretofore ignored aspects of life Saint
Francis has been acclaimed as the real father of
Italian art-he taught men the beauty of external
nature, of his brother the sun and his sister the
moon, of animal l ~ f eand all the pageantry of the
passmg seasons
v
A
February, 19.29
Havelock Ellis
As I Understand Him
By MAGNUSHIRSCHFELD
M
O S T men can be classified and put in pigeonholes here is a chemist, here a plumbei, here
a playwnght, but it is not easy to pigeon-hole
Havelock Ellis H e has specialized on so many
things, that he escapes the pitfalls of spec~alism
The specialist IS usually a man in blinkers, blmd to
all tracks except the one before his nose H e has
to think along a rut-the rut of his training Havelock Ellis escaped the ruts of tralmng-he was not
even educated a t a Public School ( F o r which the
Lord be thanked ) Childhood a t sea, educat~ona t
private schools, teaching work m various parts of
New South Wales-what a splendid absence of all
those traditions that in every country stiffen the
"educated classes" into mental Robots, carrying out
life according to a plan made for them Havelock
Ellis has worked out his own plan, or, what is better, has hved in his own way It has been a varied
hfe Born in 1859, he was in New South Wales
from 1875-79,then qualified in London as a medical man but soon gave u p medical practice for less
restricted fields of work I n 1891 he married Edith
Lees, wlth whom he had a wonderful compamonship till her death in 1916
It is hfe altogether that mterests him, and thus
it 1s that life breaks m upon all his specialism And
this specialism is so varied1 A reader of the Mermaid Series of Old Dramatists rmght think of Elhs
as a student of early drama, a reader of the Contemporary Science Series would consider hlm a man
of science, "Impressions and Comments" seem to
be the work of a literary man of vaned attainments,
and "The Dance of Life" reveals the philosopher
But not the "systematic" philosopher The universe ls too big to go Into the pmt pot of a human
system, and Elhs makes no attempt to put ~tthere
I n his great work, "Studies m the Psychology of
Sex," Ellis shows himself very unwilhng to be enslaved by a theory H e finds the relationship of
facts to life more important than the theory that
"explains" them
I
sees limits, where this school does not, ~t strays
sometimes into a cloudland, where hfe does not follow it Elhs's direct contact with life had for him
its disadvantages It brought him a t the outset Into
conflict with that strange child of ignorance and
prejudice-the law W e all know how the English
publisher of "Sexual Inversion" was convicted of
publishing an indecent book, and even now, I believe, the British Museum authorities dare not enter
the "Studies" in their catalogue The war supported reactionism in this, as in other things, and I
learn that in post-war England, a Scotland Yard
detective threatened to report a bookseller, for sellmg openly Hirschfeld's "Die Homosexualitat"
(Underhand sale - a t a higher price - is thus of
course encouraged ) The law a t present favors
ignorance, and ignorance favors cruelty Ellis has
been the steady opponent of both A s a result he
has had to publish his chief work abroad
One who combines knowledge with msdom has
a great and lovmg tolerance of life and is less prone
than the ignorant, or the men of narrow training,
to see always ugliness in ways that are not his own
When the salt water of our far ancestral home IS
connected with the symbolism of all water and of
all flowmg streams, the Idea of lustratlon by urlne
ceases to be merely ugly I use this illustrat~on,
because I have just been readmg Elhs's fine tieatrnent of "Undinism" m the last volume of his
"Studles"
N B I R T H CONTROL, Ellis's att~tudehas
been unhesitating Those who wlsh for peace
should, in nis opimon, (as he wrote m the "Nation"
of earlier days) pray for a fall m the birth-rate A
German Nationalist has approved of the "Schlacht
der Geburten" (battle of child-bearmg) prornulgated by the Itahan dictator,' and the phrase shows
us the Neo-Christian conception of the use to which
"these little ones" should be put Soldiers in petto
--of such is the kingdom of heaven All of us who
msh to see babies grow into happy men and women
are at one with Havelock Ellis
A t this tune however my readers mll be specially
pleased to get a glimpse of Havelock Elhs as nian
More than a glimpse it shall not be, for we know
how Ellis dishkes personal pubhcity , yet something
he must allow us, for this once, to say A friend of
0
T I S his steady contact with hfe, that makes
Ellis distrustful of much that passes as "psychoanalysis" How the psychoanalyst a t times piles
u p his complexes, till "they seem to be plentiful
enough to account for anythmg", E h s dlustrates
on p p 18-22 of the recent seventh volume of his
"Studles" H e does not, of course, deny the value ]See Korherr m "Stiddeutsche Monatshefte", Dee, 1927, and Harold
of the work done by the Freudian school, but he P~ctons reply, Feb , 1928
Bwth Control Ranem
mine writes of his acquaintance with h m as follows,
makmg however no claim to more than the knowledge that must come to all of those whom Ellis has
helped "I have often watched h ~ tall,
s
graclous presence, as
he searched the catalogue In the Readmg Room of the
B n t ~ s hMuseum He seemed to me a wonderful example
of the w~thdrawnstudent, who yet remamed courteous
to all who are In that " t r a g ~ cstate of tension" wh~chis
hfe a A man hvmg m great s ~ m p l ~ c,~It yused to see
h m In the orchestra seats a t the Queen's Hall, and he
told me that h ~ place
s
In the theatre was In the gallery
HISknowledge was In Inverse proport~onto his matenal
demands on hfe One summer afternoon, dunng the
war, we were s ~ t t m gm t h two 'Objectors' on the lawn
of an old cottage I then had in Essex The talk roamed
over vanous fields, and I asked Elhs whether the earher
works of a r t that represent the second toe of the humen
foot 1s longer than the first, dep~ctedan anatom~cal
fact, or slmply an aesthet~cmsh He answered, a httle
d d y , 'If you want t o g o mto that quest~on,you mll
find a whole hterature deahng m t h the subject' But
there 18 nothmg dry-asdust, and httle that is aloof,
about Elhs's personahty True, he keeps away from
the market-place and prefers the study and the countrys~de,but no one, I feel sure, ever turned to h ~ mfor
help m vam A boy wntes, or a p r l wntes, puzzled
about h ~ or
s her self, and the answer comes, in h ~ own
s
hand I have never had a typed letter from h ~ m ,and
how, a m d all h ~ stud~es,
s
he finds tune for h ~ scorrespondents, I have never been able t o magme H e would
wr~te,for mstance, that a certam boy needed help t o
understand h~mself,was I perhaps wllhng to help. ~f so,
he would send the boy my name And there must be
thousands, to whom t h ~ stouch of sympathy from the
mthdrawn student in h ~ study
s
brought the first understandmg of themselves and the first hmt that t h e ~ r
problems and anomahes need not be hopeless thmgs "
My correspondent speaks of Ellis as one who has
reverence for the personalit~esof others, and this IS,
mdeed, plam m all his work The people who are
ready to run about with their confident ministrations have seldom g v e n themselves time to understand the "evlls" they would cure Their "cure" IS
to force everybody to be like themselves EUls has
studied the "evlls" first and found that usually,
properly looked at, they need be no evils a t all
Anyone who wishes can have of Ellis's knowledge
and learn to help hlmself His is a greater and more
charitable msdom than that of the morahst
How mternational h ~ work
s
and hls sympathies
are I have every reason to know, for m my own
sphere his cordial collaboration has never failed
H e is one of the most honored members of the
Founders' Comrmttee of the World League for
Sexual Reform Wherever freedom for self-controlled mdivldual development 1s sought, Havelock
Elhs can be rehed on for his help
The Prose of Havelock Ellis
0 WRITE is a strenuous mtellectual task,"
Havelock Ellls has wntten, "not to be achieved
mthout the exercise of the best tramed and most
deliberate rational faculties " T o the art of writing
he has himself devoted much thought and effort
It constitutes, mdeed, the theme of a notable essay
and is the subject of many notes scattered through
hls volumes From his first book to his last he has
endeavored to express his thoughts in prose of a
high quality T o the perfectmg of the medium
through which IS personahty found expression he
has brought a scholar's knowledge of the nature
of hterary prose and the sensitiveness of an artist
His pages give evldence of a care which only the
lovlng craftsman could expend upon them But
quahty In Enghsh prose is not alone achleved by
painful effort, as he hlmself has pomted out There
must be present that indefinable savor that has
T
%a "Eonlsm and other Studied', p 822
hfted Enghsh prose for brief penods to high levels
of beauty, and it is that savor that the prose of
Havelock Ellis unrmstakably possesses
It is no anomaly for a man of science to write
superbly, and the fact that Havelock Ellis' best
energes have gone into scientific research has no
bearmg upon the quality of the prose he writes
Men of science from Sw Francis Bacon to Bertrand
Russell have written prose of a nobihty that 1s not
excelled by the greatest of English Stylists It may
be that the majority of the men of science who have
written with distnction have also been concerned,
apart from thew scientific mterests, m t h hterature
There are, however, notable exceptions, of whom
perhaps the foremost is Slr James Jeans, the cosmogonist, whose wrhngs are exclusively devoted
to the subjects within that field, but who is, nevertheless, possessed of a style of extraordmardy high
quahty On the other hand, writers whose subjects
would seem to demand speclal aptitude m hterary
expression are frequently not only entlrely devord
of all prosod~calgraces but seem able to select words
that only approximately express their thought It
1s enough m t h ~ connection,
s
perhaps, to refer to the
wrltmgs of John Dewey, which are not only devold
of all the attributes of fine wnting, but are, as
Joseph Warren Beach has pomted out m "The Outlook for Amerlcan Prose," as unpreclse as any
wrltmg could well be The high quallty of Elhs'
prose 1s thus Independent of the nature of the pursuits to which he has devoted hls llfe, its excellence
1s due to somethmg far more signlficant and profound
It 1s Havelock Ellis' dlstmguishmg characteristic
that he is more than a great sclentlst, more than a
great man of letters, he 1s an artlst It 1s t h ~ sfact
alone, perhaps, that 1s the key to the understandmg of his manlfold actlvitles T o every problem
that he has approached, whether ~tbe the problem
of life or sex or genius, or the slmple wonder of an
English garden, he has brought all the understandmg and the sensitiveness of the artlst All the marks
of the artlst are upon hlm his appearance, hls love
of music, and hls love of good actmg, hls f e e h g
for nature, sculpture and fine dancing H e 1s seen
today as one of the supremely great men of all time
and, perhaps, when we look a llttle closer, it may
be seen that he is one of the greatest artists of all
tune
T I S from his quahtles as an artlst that we may
explain the excellence of h ~ w
s r h n g A s Wdham
Morrison Patterson discovered m his study of the
rhythm of prose, spontaneity, ease and fitness characterize the motlons of savages, whde the movements of civlllzed men are awkward and replete
wlth wasted effort The wrlter of great prose has
recaptured that rhythmc art w h ~ hthe race had
lost No reader of the prose of Havelock E h s , If
he has any musical and rhythmc sense a t all, can
be unaware of the melody and rhythm his prose
possesses in such abundance There 1s a peculiar
harmony, a qulet rise and fall of emphasis that pervades all his writings and makes them not qulte llke
the writings of any other man Certain phrases of
hls own that he frequently employs, such as "it
well may be" or "for as we know today", tend to
give a distinctive rhythm- It 1s as pure and as
highly rhythmical as the prose of D e Qumcey,
Landor and Moore The follomng well known
passage, taken from the chapter whlch closed, as he
thought, his llfe work, and which must have been
wrltten under the deepest emotional influences, 11lustrates perhaps more clearly than any other passage the lyrlcal qualities of his prose
"The present 1s In every age merely the shlftlng pomt
a t whlch past and future meet, and we can have no
quarrel mth elther There can be no world wlthout
trad~tlons,nelther can there be any llfe mthout movement As Heracleltos knew a t the outset of modern
philosophy, we cannot bathe tmce In the same ~tream,
though, as we know today, the stream stdl flows in an
unendmg clrcle There 1s never a moment when the
new dawn 1s not breakmg over the earth, and never a
moment when the sunset ceases to dle It 1s well to
greet serenely even the first gllmmer of the dawn when
we see ~ t not
, hastening towards ~t wlth undue speed,
nor leavlng the sunset wlthout gratitude for the dymg
hght that once was dawn
"In the moral world we are ourselves the hghtbearers,
and the cosmlc process 1s In us made flesh For a brlef
space ~t 1s granted to us, ~f we wdl, t o enlighten the
darkness that surrounds our path As In the anclent
torch-race, whlch seemed to Lucretlus to be the symbol
of all hfe, we press forward torch m hand along the
course Soon from behlnd comes the runner who wlll
outpace us All our sklll hes In glvlng Into his hand
the hvlng torch, bnght and unfllckenng, as we ourselves
&sappear In the darkness "
A t tunes he achleves the tenderness that marks
Hazhtt's "for a httle while I had sat m t h the nods
at their golden tables, I had tasted of all eayth's
bhss "
'
6
I
These years have gone by, I scarcely know how,
and the heart has often been crushed and heavy, 11fe has
seemed t o recede Into the mmness behmd, and onr's eyes
have been fixed on the End that crowns all Yet on
the first day of Spnng, and thls Spnng more than
those of the late years that passed over us, soft alr and
sunshme lap me around and I lndeed see agaln the
solemn galety of the tuhp and hear the message m the
blackb~rd's low and serenely joyous notes, my heart IS
young agam, and the blood of the world 1s In my velns,
and a woman's soul 1s beautiful and her hps are sweet "
H E N Shakespeare writes "my hand will
rather the multitudinous seas mcarnadine"
he 1s moved more by the music of the words than by
the accuracy of his vlsion Ellis, writing of the
restless, antiseptic sea" achieves as individual ur
vlslon and greater accuracy wlthout the sacr~ficeof
phrasal melody Ellls believes that Raleigh's mvocation to Death is the most magnificent sentence m
the language 2 The most magnificent sentence to
-
W
'6
2"O eloquent, just and mrghty Deathl whom none could adv~se,
thou hast persuaded what none hath dared, thou hast done, and
'In The Dona of h f e ( p 161) Ellis quotes lus flrst,~ehwlmarter whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hath cast out of the
HIS haud- world and despjsed, thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched
as saylng 'You will have a hand of your o a n my boy
writlng IS, however, the typlcal handwrltlng of the scholar See the greatness, all the pnde, cruelty, and amb~tlonof man, and covered
examples m Englrrh Handwntmg, by Roger Fty and E A Lowe, lt all over wlth these two narrow words, Hlc jaclt" Slr Waiter
S P E Tract No XXIII, Oxfad, 1926
Raielgh, The Hwtory of the World, Book V, Chap VI
Bzrth Control Revzero
Havelock Ellis
Prophet of Rational Freedom
By EDGAR
WOOD
PANGBORN
A
H U N D R E D years or so from now, when
history has e s t a b 1i s h e d Havelock Elhs
among the other immortals of our era, he will be
remenibered as one nho gave his life and effort
toward a sane liberat~onof humanity's sexual life
H e will be numbered anlong the very wisest and
bravest of all pioneers, among the most far-sighted
of all leaders
Morris Ernst and William Seagle have shown*
how censorship apparently has at least three more
or less definite stages, in the growth of the Race
Mind from religious censorship, to political, to
sexual
A t first, men are afraid of anything that appears
to threaten their accepted superstitions - their
organized religions, froin this fear come w i t ~ h burnings and inqu~sitions But codified religion
d ~ e sof its own rigidity (as formal Roman Catholicism seems to be dying), or is exploded by mtellectual revolt, or is in some other way forced to
a secondary place m men's minds Meanwhile,
humanity grows
The first place is then taken by a fear for shakily
established political institutions, f r o m this fear
come political persecutions and suppression of all
ideas that menace the political status quo Such a
state of affairs is bound to end in some such explosion
as the French Revolution Meanwhile, humanity
grows
And when religious and political freedom are
attained (in theory a t least), men have time to be
worried about the terrific inner drive of sex, and
we have that sort of censorship, (public and private
repression), which is so prominent a f e a t u r e of
present-day life Meanwhzle, humanzty grows
be found in his own writings is addressed to manl real
kind "0 Man, sublime in dreams, ~ i t i f uin
life, august in the creation of ideals, lower than an
idiot in the face of the real world, 0 pitiful Man,
leave the world alone to be lived in by those who
know how to live, be content to dream " Of death
he has written only indirectly, but w t h a touch of
Biblical phraseology "Last week, when I was
feeling, as ever since I left Cornwall I have felt,
singularly firm against assault, Death, in his casual
tentative indifferent way, just gave me a torturing
prick with his scythe as he passed by, leaving me
alive but bleeding Ever smce I lie on my back invalid, for the first time in my active life, and whether
he is likely to come again soon there is none to tell
me "
The
arbiter of any prose* as Samtsbur3'
of
Prose
found a t the end of his long
Neither scansion
Is the sensitive ear
the standard
which we can
the merit of literary cornPothat we must
It Is by the ear
~~~g~prose, as lt Is
by the ear that we are
aware of the loveliness of a Schubert sonata Other
tests disclose the quality of thought rather than the
of the
There Is, for example, the test that William Bayard Hale applied
in his brilliant study of Woodrow Wilson's prose
H e found that a representative group of men of
letters from Shakespeare to Shaw employed on
the average, in passages selected a t random of 108
words, thirteen verbs and four and one-half adlectives Woodrow Wilson, on the contrary employed
S ~ X
verbs and thirty adjectives Havelock Ellis, by
the same test, uses, curiously enough, the thirteen
verbs but employs six adjectives The extraordinary number of ad~ectlvesfound in Wilson's text
was plainly used to conceal a paucity of thought
The number employed by Ellis is no greater than
that used by Shaw, for example, and indicates
merely ~ m p e d e dprogressive thought development Perhaps the most outstanding characteristic
of the architectonics of Ellis' prose is the suggestiveness of his paragraph endings, for thev are
neither abrupt, as were Carlyle's, nor complete, as
a, Conrad's, but, their thought being fully expressed, they tend to shade off hmtlng a t a suggestiveness of things unsaid S There 1s also the high
note, which balances everything said before, upon
which his compositions invariably end But ~t is,
however, when all is said, to the gorgeous wordpermeatmg his passages that the lover of
prose will turn There is a symphony of literary
music to be found in hls prose that only the gieatest
of ~
~
~ have equalled
l
~
~
h
Wee George Samtsbury, Hutory of Englvh Prors Rhythm, London, 1922, p 461
*"To The Pure
Vhng
Press, 1928
"
A Study of Obscenity and the Censor, The
F C O U R S E it must not be thought that these
0
stages mmc m any neat mathematical order
A t present m America we have all three, wonderfully tangled
But the restrictions to political and
religious freedom are, ewept m certam backward men must recognize the fact that women are their
~deallyon a level
communities, m a state of very obvious decay Sex- comrades, and not "bemgs
ual obscuranitism is by all odds the most powerful above themselves and practically on a level cons~dand oppressive form of the modern censor complex erably below themselves " And men are begmning
Ernst and Seagle seem to suggest that when seu- to accept t h ~ sfact today, more and more-as Elhs
ual censorship dies, as it must, there will be some points out with a satisfact~onwh~chmust be shaled
by any ratlonal mmd
other hystelical fear to take ~ t place
s
T h ~ hardly
s
seems lllrely Rehgion, politics, and the so-called
Instincts grow and alter w ~ t hthe growth and al"pnvate life"-what is there of mlmg importance teration of human nature The old order changeth
in the human equation that does not fall Into one -m the mtimate fields of psychology as much as in
of these three categories? Why, when we actually the broader, social fields
have freedom for a wise and beautiful sexual life,
Those in accord with modem thought know that
there won't be anything left to censor!
the Ideal of sexual love is comradeship When this
Grant that the political world order 1s rotten at Ideal is realized the male no longer wants to purits core of r a b ~ dnationalism and m need of t ~ t a n t ~ sue,
c the female no longer wants to be caught, male
change, ~f there IS ever to be peace, grant that the and female desire to umte their efforts toward the
death of formalized religion has left a pamful gap capture of Love itself And m thls atmosphere the
m the major~tyof mmds But ~f the human force psycholog.lca1 forces whch might otherwise be dinow spent in a half blmd struggle against sexual rected mto the shattermg horror of jealousy are
confusion could be freed, would not these problems spent m an exploration of the mfinities of gentlebe solved more rapldly than we, w ~ t hour only half- ness, understandmg, joyous adaptation This way
wakened mmds, can begin to magme'
lies happmess, no other way than t h ~ s
I n the effort to free this Immense and potentially
True, the way cannot be found until there is the
splendid force, no man has done more than Have- mental clar~tywhich comes from mtellectual freelock Ellis N o man has done more than he to hber- dom But"
ate women and men from their fear of the glorious
There was never so much clear and critrealities of sex, no man has done more to make posical thought m the world as there is now, never so
sible of realization the human nght to be happy
large a body of generally access~bleknowledge
No man hns done more, and few have ever seen so
and suggestion, never anythmg like the same
clearly the goal of their efforts
breadth of outlook, the same universahty of iinaginatlve freedom That is so m spite of mfinite
N THIS land of the slowly becommg free, and
'w
turmoil and confusion
home of the sometunes qulte brave, there is a
little law whlch restnets the sale of "Studles m the
OVE as the apotheosis of comradesh~p-yes,
Psychology of Sex" to doctors and lawyers-these
that way and no other lies happmess And
classes bemg somehow or other lmmune to "temptations" and all that sort of t h g Hence I am not when Havelock Ellis has done so much to clea~thls
yet famil~arwith Havelock Ellis's magnum opus way for us, how madequate must be any thanks we
The best 1 can do, on this occasion when we cele- can p v e h m m words1
I n truth, there is only one way In which we can
brate the sevent~ethbirthday of our beloved pioneer,
w~llbe to sttempt an estmate of what seems to me express our gratitude to such a leader as Ellis And
the finest deta1 of Ellis's work ("Detail" not at that 1s by lettmg freely into our llves the hght wh~ch
all m the sense of "trifle"-the
word LS used merely his creative thought has generated The mmd of
to distinguish the subject from the more general Havelock Ellis gzves and wants no reward except
ideas whlch Ellis has done so much to popularize ) that others shall take
W e must then find m ourselves the same courage
I refer to "The Love-Rights of Women" *
that
made Ellis explore the mysteries of sex for the
The value of the work is not so much m Ellis's
suggestions as to what these "love-rights" are, as ~t sake of others, the courage 1s there it is for us to
l be hard to find it, ~f we rememis m the simple statement that_there are such rights find it It w ~ lnot
What mdlvidual women want their sexual love to ber that the only way out of confusion 1s the way
be IS a thing they must decide for themselves, but of love
H G Wells, ''The Passionate Friends", Harper, 1918
One of the "Little Essays of Love snd Vlrtue", Doran, 1923
I
L
Birth Control Revrew
Havelock Ellis
Social Relativist
By EDUARD
C LINDEMAN
THE
rlches of Havelock Ellis's mmd "have certainlv made themselves wings", else how account fol the difficulty in selectmg a smgle phase?
HIScatholic mind soars so easdy over myriads of
subjects of human nlterest that one hes~tatesboth
to generalme and to particularize From the point
of vlew of the social sclentlst, he stands supreme as
the most modern of contemporary social relativists,
and it is from thls pomt of view that he has, perhaps, fertilized my th~nkmgmost directly It will,
I presume, be withm the scope of my assignment
if I go beyond his mtentlons m my attempt to give
account of the meaning of hls social relativlsm to
me What is sald m the followmg paragraphs may
not be preciselv what Havelock Ellls has said or
might say, but ~trepresents a t least my mterpretation of hls thought
I n the first place, Havelock Ellis does not conceive a world of values m which the advantage lies
either with the lndivldual or with society H e resents the blind and awkward authoritv of the state,
but he also recognizes that much of the world's
work might be done effectively and without coeraon
through the state as means T o hun, freedom does
not mean indlvldualism and unrestrained irresponsibility but rather a llfe of llberty m and withm a
changmg soclal context There 1s no absolute mdividual, and by the same token there IS no absolute
group
HE world, as seen by Havelock E h s , forever
T
recedmg from or approachmg confhct Dlsturbance and equillbriurn are ultunate tralts of our
IS
universe "The great prmaples of confict m hfe
are built mto the structure of the world"
"The confllct of forces and the struggle of opposmg
wills are of the essence of our -verse
and alone
hold it together " Many tender-mmded persons
shrink from so realist~ca new of hfe, they go on
seeking a futlle, and non-creative harmony Not
so, Havelock Ellis, he not merely sees confllct as
one of the prmary gwen data of life but he sees
conflict and its resolution as the means toward creative llving War, as one mamfestation of c o n h t
on its lowest level, he abhors "In the creation of
the forms of art," he writes m "The Philosophy of
Conflict", "we see, as m the evolution of the forms
of animal life, there is no room for violence, conflict and resistance go hand m hand with harmony
and balance, we must g o very low down m the arts
-mdeed, to the most degraded of all-to find that
knock-out hlow adored of the mllltarlst " Nothing
is created through sameness, difference IS the great
stimulator And, out of the emergences of interpenetrated differences come those discoveries and
mventions whlch lift life to higher and creatlve
levels
O R A L I T Y , llkemse, possesses no absolutes
M
The good hfe
an art, not a lesson to be
learned bv rote
IS
I n a relatlve world everythmg
changes, ethlcal rules as well as science "Morality
is but the grammar of life " Nor does thls mean
that the ethm of Havelock Ellis is representatwe
of a new form of hedonism The llfe of the artist
1s a dlsclplmed llfe, and he who would find the way
of the good llfe through the search for the beautiful
has a far more difficult talk than he who chooses
rules and dutles As A W Benn says of the Greek
Philosophers, "The beautiful is hard-hard to
judge, hard to wm, hard to keep " There is, mdeed, somethmg splendidly heroic in this conception
of moralitv as set forth by Havelock E l l s , heroic
m its freedom and m its call for inner discipline
Here, then, are three forms of social relativlsm
which have been ~llurninatedby the wlsdom and the
insight of Havelock Ellis There are many other
manifestations of t h theme
~ ~ m his wntmgs, and
there are, one must affirm, evidences of a less relatlvlstic stram m some of hls more ph~losophicessays, but he stands as a brave challenge to all absolutists who would somehow bmd llfe with chams
and press its stuff mto moulds H e has freed many
minds from bondage and has brought adventurous
joy to all those who
smg
Of a land where even the old are fair,
And even the wise are merry of tongue "
Obituary
Loule Elhs, slster of Havelock E h s , died on the eighteenth of December For several years prenously she had
suffered increasingly from rheumatic arthntls, but thls la
no way seemed to impair her charming and eager mind
She was devoted to her &stmgulshed brother and could
find no greater pleasum than in talking about hlm wlth
some friendly vlsltor The books of both D r Goldberg
and Mr Peterson profited greatly from her generous
advlce
Havelock Ellis
An Appreciation
By E M ~ N
PETHICK
E
LAWRENCE
E see the world m the hght of our own ex- from them the hfe-givmg waters of freedom That
perlence, and therefore m my view, there bit of vigorous engmeering, fraught w ~ t hdangers
are three outstandmg phdosophers who have, dur- and drfficulties, now successfully a c h ~ e v e d ,has
m g the past t h r t y or forty years, changed the whole swept away barriers that otherwise would have hmcomplex of our natlonal thought, expanded our dered the flow of his fertil~zingw~sdom A few
mental hor~zonand created all that 1s best m the years ago women were powerless to recreate then
spmt of our modern l ~ f e They are Havelock Ell~s, own standards of morality m realms of sex, love
Edward Carpenter and Bernard Shaw
and motherhood Only those women endowed w ~ t h
M y early youth was deeply mfluenced by the poet exceptional gemus, or beauty, or wealth, or the patof Democracy, a fresh wmd was blown through a ronage of those of very high rank, possessed any
stuffy age by the brdliant d r a m a t ~ s twho swept cho~cebetween acceptmg the cond~t~ons
of serfdom
away the solemn sentunentalities and shallow 11lu- under the law, or becoming social outcasts, but
sions wh~chwere the scum of the ideals of the nine- women are now m a position to avad themselves of
teenth century But although "The New S p ~ n t " the knowledge of the scient~ficmvestigator and of
was read and re-read with del~ghtwhen ~twas pub- the art of the ph~losopherof human relat~onshps
hshed many years ago, ~t is only slowly and pro- Havelock Ellis is reaping the harvest of the seed
gressively that I have grown to the full apprecia- whch he sowed m "Little Essays m Love and
hon of the scope of Havelock Ells's vwon
Virtue" H e sees m the serene autumn of hls hfe,
A long hfe of experience m the world has taught not only a great change m pubhc opmion, he IS
me the mrnense value of his research m the realm able to watch, m the actual lives of many of hls
of Sex Psychology, and hours of leisure have of younger fr~ends,the dreams of hLs own youth comlate gwen me the dehght of commumon with h ~ s mg true H e has entered so qu~etlyyet withal so
personal self, through the three volumes of his "Im- potently mto the stream of evolution, that he has
presslons and Comments", and the notes and & a r m become llke a creative force of N a t u r ~ fthat
supplied by hlm to the author of the recently pub- Nature wh~cha slowly shapmg man to a more godhshed Biography have gwen me the sense of the like state of bemg
orgamc harmony of hLs lnner bemg and 1t.sliterary
The vislon rues to my mmd of a gallant s h p m
a wide calm sea, reflectmg a golden sun m the westexpresslon
ern sky, whde a full moon rises m the East Ship
ocean, sun and moon and sky are symbols of
and
N S O M E subtle way there ls, I feel, a co-relation
between the mstmchve pawon that has doml- his spmt Strength, serenity, qu~etnessand beauty
nated his life work and that wh~chdominated the find expresslon m his work The spmt of life has
Movement for Women's Freedom w ~ t hwhich I found m h m the creat~veword
have been ~ d e n t d e d Havelock Ellls m "ImpresPhilosopher and Scientist
sions and Comments" refers to a woman of the
Victorian era who chose to d ~ m
e a burnmg house
rather than escape from ~tunclothed, and then proceeds to tell the story of a nurse on a Hospital Ship
A V E L O C K E L L I S took a despised
who witnessed the foundermg of a torpedoed vessel
subject, sex, and raised ~tto the level of a
durmg the W a r and who-bemg an expert m life- science And t h ~ desp~te
s
the fact that he has strugto throw off her clothes with the gled constantly agamst a vast array of forces comsame-began
words "Excuse me Boys, I must save the Tom- monlv catalogued as "pubhc sent~ment"all of wh~ch
m e s " That he says is the spint to wh~chhe glves sought to condemn any such effort
homage That 1s the spmt m which hundreds of
Philosopher and sclent~st,he has risen above the
women, whose names will never be known, divested petty meanness of those who through "touchmg
themselves of convent~ons,of "ladyl~ke" standards such pustules of the soul" as were engendered withm
of behavlor, as they devoted themselves to the Mi11- then own small mmds sought to besm~rchhis work
tant Movement for the political emanc~pationof by declaring ~t mdecent and obscene For there
thew sex, real~zmgthat the den~alof c~t~zenship
was are those who are so biased in their n e w that they
the weakest poult m the dykes that dammed up have attempted to cast over the whole subject of
W
I
H
Barth Control Bernew
Havelock Ellis
sex and over all those mterested m it the mdecencies
of their own thoughts T h ~ attitude
s
possesses an
unusual vitality where the question of sex IS concerned, because here the emot~onsplay so great a
part It has taken almost unlunited courage to push
on against such opposition
I n spite of all obstacles m h u path, Havelock
E l l s has gone steaddy on h s way as the great
pioneer m the field of sex I believe that the day
will come when he wdl rank with Newton as one of
the greatest leaders m any field of sclence, and that
h s own part~cularfield will then be recognized as
just as fundamental to any real world progress as
phys~csItself
Thls day, I hope, may be not so far distant W e
live m an age of rapid change, because of the rapicky with which new thoughts may be communicated W e can, today, exchange ideas by letter m
as many days as ~t took months only a hundred
years ago to effect such an exchange Durmg this
period of mastery over purely physical thlngs the
Newton's have held the center of the stage But
if our civil~zationIS to be maintained, lf hfe is to go
on to somethmg finer and better, we must now pay
some attention to the spiritual and psychical side
I f we do not or cannot make as great as the advance
towards the adequate control of the phys~calforces
we have subjugated the control on the spiritual
and psychlcal side, our mastery over th~ngsmerely
phys~calmay spell the very doom of our so-called
civdization
Any attempt to appralse llfe In other than purely
phys~calterms must take sex mto account Every-
thmg else, w ~ t hthls smgle exception, has already
been subjected to sc~entificanalysis Sex, alone,
is still m the clutches of a type of thought laid down
fifteen or elghteen hundred years ago by ecclesiasts pledged to a life of celibacy, because it was
not worth whde to beget, bear and rear children
since the second coming, and hence the end of the
world, was a few days, weeks, or a t most months
away The tragedy lies m the fact that thu type of
mmd will brook no encroachments upon what it
asserts is its own particular sphere It is the type
which threatened poor old Gahleo with death a t the
flammg stake because he wanted to upset ~ t conceps
tions of what the universe ought to be-regardless
of what it was, the same type which to-day pillories
Judge Ben Lmdsey because he is mvadmg its precmcts by darmg to question its sex tabus It LS not
mterested m arrivmg a t the truth It seeks only
self-preservation and perpetuation
All this has been said so often it seems almost
ridiculous to say ~t again And yet m no better
way can we honor the work of Havelock Ellis than
by reaffirmmg the prmc~pleswhich he publicly proclaimed over t h ~ r t yyears ago, and by pledgmg
ourselves to the task of carrymg on the study of
sex free from superstit~onsand archa~ctabus
One needs look mto the future but another lifetime to anticipate so revolutionary a change in the
att~tudetowards sex that people of that day wlll
look back aghast a t the attitude held by the majorlty today And for the change, wh~chwill make
life to our grandchildren a far finer and sweeter
thing, the work of Havelock Elhs will be largely
responsible
Brixton Revisited
I
N Leningrad, on the further slde of the Neva
and not far from the former Czar's Wmter Palace, are two small plam bulldmgs wh~chmay sometune be listed among the shrmes of Russia They
are the laborator~esof Professor Pavlov and his coworkers Last summer I spent an unforgettable
afternoon there, watchmg some operations on rabbits in one of the immaculate rooms, observing a
dog which was beginnmg to exhib~tneurasthenic
symptoms, examlmng the mgeniously contrived
cells m which the dogs are confined for the expenments in conditioned reflexes I met a young man
who had only been working m t h Professor Pavlov
a few months, and a gnzzled veteran who had been
m t h him for twenty-five years, carrylng on through
wars and revolutions Youth and old ahke, they
are studymg, with infimte patience, man'? best
friend, the dog, m order to make man more intellig b l e to hlmself
One mornmg a fortnight later I was readmg a t
the Brit~shMuseum in London, and lookmg up
from my desk I caught slght of a splend~dhead of
flowmg wh~tehair and the tip of a beautifully
carved nose which could belong to nobody else but
Havelock Ellls There he was, makmg a few notes,
checking u p some obscure pomts as he had done
thousands of tunes smce he began h s researches m
that great hbrary back m the early eight~es I could
not resist mterruptmg h m for a moment and then,
after another hour's work, we went to lunch A s
cheerful, keen, calm as ever, he seemed even more
Havelock Ellis
Liberator
'
T
HE clvllized world IS a t a turnlng-point m ~ t s Merator, and probably the greatest liberator that
hlstory it must elther ren~ainm the shallows our land can ever know For of what use is the
or trust Itself to the full flood, let loose by sclence, political liberator ~f all he can do 1s to glve freedom
whlch will carry ~ton to a great future But, hrst, to a small-souled and tunid nation? Or the mtel~tmust learn to leave behmd ~t the shadows of sex- lectual llberator who stdl leaves us a prey to a canual ignorance and fear in which ~thas llved so long ker of fear a t the very centre of our bemg?
and take mto ~ t own
s hands the control of llfe a t ~ t s
source I n a word, its task now IS-to face the dark
A V E L O C K ELLIS 1s probably the greatest
o' the world, particularly the facts of sexual psyliberator that t h ~ century
s
has produced, which
chology One part of the West, the Anglo-Saxon, 1s the reason that I count it a great honour to be able
has long been suffering from mental rePresslons to ,rite thls appreciation H e is a llberator m a
whlch not only dwarf i ~ d ~ l d u~ersonalltles,
al
but pecullar sense, not applicable to the other scientists
create an atmosphere of furtive s t u ~ l d l t ~ re- who have worked m the department of sexual psvgard to the most vital problems of all, the racial chology H e is, of course, a sclentlst whose works
ones
contam a great store-house of facts But he was
Yet, reasonable people should be capable of also the pioneer who, a t great personal cost, brought
grasPmg the facts of blologl' and ~ s ~ c h o l ~as€ Ywithm the purview of the ordinary citizen both the
calmly as they do those of astronomy And untd problems of sex and the scientific way of dealmg
they can do thl% there 1s no hope of &her healthy wlth them, br~n,omg them out of the sclentfic labogenerations or a healthy mtellectual atmosphere for ratory "to the open And that was a darmg deed
them when they are born
In the Anglo-Saxon cornrnunlty, a darmg and a
Now, the man or woman who can free us from wise deed
N~~ that all F~~there not only the mmd
thls dread of the secrets of our own nature 1s a
of this man to be considered, there 1s the splrit m
vigorous, m better health, than he was a few Years which that mmd works And here we come to the
ago
greatest thmg that Havelock Ellis has done for us
sailing I
The day
the long bus 'Ide
he has given us good reason for courage We know
that crowded llttle now that human mtelllgence need not fall, ~f we
to Brlxton and sat again
sipping tea wth two other pests
The same will only use it, m face of the most perplexmg quespictures, the same overflomng book-cases, the same tion of human psychology light, more light, 1s the
but Pled as
mth new books and lournals, many from Amerlca And there was Have- solutlon of the evils from which we have suffered
lock Ellis, quletly a t ease, m t h that curiouslv dlsmuch for
as a sclentlst As a
tant gaze whlch he has even when he 1s listening
prophet
he
has
reached
the
posltion
of seelng the
most mtently Perhaps he was thlnklng for a mogreat
bulk
of
the
thlnlung
world
come
round to
ment of all those other people who had been there
thmk
with
lum
,
h
~
thought
s
has
become
an
mtegral
to tea, to whom he listened, one by one, for long
As
to war,
part
of
the
stream
of
human
thought
serlous hours, whlle they let hlm Into their souls
to
mdustry,
art
and
he
was
a
PIoneer
This was as much of a laboratory as Havelock Elhs
would ever need N o animals to experiment on, no thinker HIS"New Age" must have been, as it was
the pulses of the
mstruments, no drugs Only people, telling then to me, a qulckener to many of
grotesque and pltlfuland tragic stories And my Inner 'Ife
his
are
POsmlnd went back to those small bulldmgs across the SeSS the supreme power of qulckenmg the splrlt
that Is his peculiar
he vltallzes
Neva, where Pavlov, now on the verge of elghtv, and As a
mtelllgence*
he braces
courage, he widhis ssslstants, back from their summer vacations,
horlwn
were hard as work, making thousands of rmnute obAnd
the
greatest senwe of all that a man can
servatlons Pavlov and Ellls 1 A s str~klngdifferent
offer
his
fellows
1s to widen their h~rlzonand to
as Freud and Elhs, yet all three equally great in
thelr respectwe realms and havmg essentiallv the deepen them vital trust m the future
Havelock Ellis has done all this
same end in view
13
Bwth Control Rernero
Ave Havelock Ellis
eeetings by Telegraph
F
RANCIS GALTON has set forth the laws of
Eugerucs, whose unportance 1s becommg more
L O I R E au hberateur des PreJ+Fs sexuels, and more recognmd today Havelock E h s has
apotre d'une humamte medeure Vlve Have- bravely travelled a parallel road, which gradually
lock E k s 1
wdl rescue us Honor to Galton, Havelock E h
VICTOR
~~~~1~
and the Blrth Control League1
France
A U Q UFOXEL
~
G
An Insparation
London
The work of Havelock Elhs has always been an Insplratlon to me, because he, perhaps more than any other
h n n g man, has succeeded m combining the pitlless des~re
for truth which 1s sclence wlth u n d l m e d appreclatlon of
all the other aspects of hie, and m t h the capaclty for hvmg hfe nchly and fully as well as sanely He is In his own
person the embodunent of that sclentlfic huma~usmwhich
alone can brmg us out of our present troubles
I can assure you that ~t1s a real pnvllege t o be allowed
t o offer t h ~ sall-too-bnef trlbute to hlm on his Seventieth
Blrthday
JULUN
S Hu-
A Masterly P s y c h o l o ~ t
Schenectady, N Y
I am very happy t o have the opportuxuty of addmg a
word to the many which mll be sent congratulat~ngnot
only Mr Havelock Elhs on his attalnlng the respectable
age of seventy, but of congratulat~ng all progressive
persons who stlll have the insplratlon of hls word and
work
I t h ~ n k~t1s the courage of our hero that appeals to
me most Not that he has gone In "where angels fear to
tread", but that he has dared to enter where men have
wrttten "verboten"
Of course none mU deny M r Elhs'
mtelhgence But there are thousands of others who are
mtelhgent, too Yet how few have the darmg that he
possesses t o express news acceptable t o only a small
mmonty
It has been my pnvdege t o read some of the books mtended only for physicians I regularly read other productlons by M r Elhs, mcludmg what I Imagme is almost
hls latest, a part of a sympos~umon "Whlther Mankmd"
I n all the wntings I find ongmahty and freshness of
thought, a confidence that man 1s capable of understandIng many t h ~ n g swhch conservatlve people have been
afrald to let him know about Perhaps ~t is because I
am very hberal myself that I the more appreciate the
outspoken utterances of M r E h s I am constantly
meetmg the tlmorous "gentlemen of the cloth" who largely
agree wlth me as to mews, but who tell them parlshloners
something else, because they honestly beheve ~t to be for
the good of them peace of mmd
When, therefore, Mr Havelock Elhs comes out frankly m t h the truth, I regard it as salutory T o be sure we
do not tell our young ch~ldrenall that they may have t o
face In hfe But we ought to be teaching them on a n educational basls and upon the assumption that they are a t
least as capable as ourselves, and bemg a generatlon
younger, can asslmllate progressive Ideas better than we
were able to do On sex, marnage and hvorce Mr Ellis
1s ahead of hls tlme Had the present generation accepted
hls mews many a broken heart and home and hfe would
have been spared Thousands of men and women have
gone to destruction when all the t m e the remedy for them
misunderstanding was a t hand But (paradox of paradoxes ') an othemse credulous people are unbehevcrs
They readily accept what has not a sclnt~llaof sclentlfic
endence behmd it, and reject plans whlch have been subjected to careful analysis and experiment This, of
course, IS all understood by M r E l h , who 1s a master
psychologst M r Elhs well knows how we come to beheve and hsbeheve, and t h s very knowledge on hls part
makes hlm an optmist
ERNEST
CALDECOTT
Gratitude
New Yolk
The tlme in whlch he has hved has so much for whlch to
be grateful for that ~t 1s not easy for the mdmdual to
mscnrmnate among hls contributions, to rest judgment on
any one of them But to me the achievement for whch he
should be oftenest remembered, and for whlch In the passmg of the generatlon of hls contemporar~es,he 1s most
l~kelyto be forgotten, IS for prondmg whlle he hved a
competent medlum of commurncat~onfor the subjects that
most interested hlm
Of all changmg human topics that call from t ~ m eto
tune for fresh dlscuss~on,none are so a c u l t to approach
a s the subject of sex, charged, as all the famillar phrases
about ~tbecome, m t h the prejudces, the gnevances, the
taboos and sublimations of the past What I have mcreasingly recognized m my own life 1s that it 1s chlrfly to
Havelock Ellls that we owe the ncw conversational approach, the new vocabulary whlch our present necess~tyof
revising our sex behaviors In the hght of new knowledge
on ~tlmposes upon us Even d it should happen to Mr
Ehs, a s In the hmltatlon of human mtehgence so often
does happen, that the knowledge of sex whch he has contnbuted should prove only half-knowledge, there wdl
always stand t o hls credh the p o s s ~ b h t yof an approach
t o it more freed than any other in hs tlme from the &sablhties of its past It 1s In thls quarter that my personal
obhgatlon t o him hes, and m t h ~tan urgent personal request that he mU manage enough more birthdays for me
t o be able t o convey my thanks to hm in person
MABY A u s n ~
More Tributes
more than anyone else to represent In our generation the
character of the class~cphilosopher or mse man or sage
I should be happy to be quoted t o thls effect in the Birthday number of the BIRTH CONTROL
REVIEW
From the Paczjic Coast
Lou Angeles, CaL
New York
I regret exceedmgly that I can not send an adequate
The mportance of Havelock Elhs has always seemed
contnbution to the Havelock Ellis B~rthdayNumber I
to me greater even than any of hls speclfic contributions
t o knowledge would suggest Certainly he, more than any can ouly say, what IS already known throughout the CIVIL
one man, 1s responsible for the readiness of the general ized world, that m the matter of cultwating a sclentlfic
pubhc to tolerate a rational approach to sex problems attltude toward human sex Ilfe, and thus placmg ourselves
n a successful attack upon the dlfticult and
Durmg the course of the last several centunes one sub- m a p o s ~ t ~ ofor
perplexmg
problems
whlch dally arlse In that phase of our
ject after another has lost ~ t "sacred"
s
(1 e undmussable) character and been generally acknowledged to be Lfe, Havelock Ellls has been a leader among leaders
Human soclety has tolerated falrly candld &scusslons
properly subject to consideration in the hght of reaof
economlc problems, but ~t 1s kcommg clearer every day
son Sex was perhaps the last, and Elhs succeeded where
that
the solutlon of these problems alone can be expected
all others failed in making any large part of the pubhc
d to conslder it rat~onally Even a hundred years ago to brmg rehef from mlsery, but hardly to make a posltive
there were Innumerable thmgs whlch an educated man was contnbution toward happmess The latter seems to be
not necessarily supposed t o know anything about Elhs dependent malnly on a satisfactory adjustment of our love
made some rat~onalknowledge of sex part of the equlp hfe Yet, for one reason or another, a frank facmg of
the problems In thls phase of our llfe has been studiously
ment of every enhghtened m a n
avo~ded,and to Havelock Ellls, more than anyone else,
JOUEPH
WOODKRUTCH
belongs the credlt of k~ndlmgthe fire whch shall throw
some hght upon the darkness of the ages
If ~t1s true, as Schlller has pomted out, that all lmpulses
P~ttsburgh,P a
Havelock Elhs haa had the advantage of a n unusual and trends of mdmduals and of socletles have but two
and n e b endowment, which was so strong as t o leave him sources-hunger and love-and ~f it 1s true that happmess
m no doubt about what he wanted to do Starting mth can be constructed only on the second of these, then the
thls he has m t h g ~ e a patience
t
and persistence prepared magmtude of the contribut~onmade by Havelock Elhs 1s
not dlfticult to apprec~ate
hmself t o bnng h ~ endowment
s
Into full fruition
AARONJ ROSANOFP,
MD
H e has been a fearless and volumnous writer, ad&ng a
nch herltage to our general understandmg and knowledge
He has accomphshed all t h ~ sIn such a clear and underFrom England
standable style that we dehght to do hun honor
Combe Martm, England
HABLAND
W LONG,M D
I am under a pressure of work and Havelock Ellls 1s
too
blg a man, hls work 1s too great, hls alm and achieveSussex, England
ment too mde and deep, to be botched m haste as a subject
I am rejolced to find that you are continuing that ad- for an artlcle H e comes, not so much wlth a new method
mrable Blrthday Number with unabated enthusiasm as a new mlnd t o the world of thought, npenmg and
T h ~ scontlnulty of effort produces a cumulative power enlarging ~deas,enrichmg the modern world, always pasThe BIRTH CONTROL
whlch nothmg can withstand
sionately curious m hls research, calm m hls findmgs,
REVIEWby these Birthday numbers has done more to profound in hls teachmg, possessed of that rare equlpolse
spread the beneficent mfluence of Ellls' work than any- In hls character, as a man and a Chmker, which is the hlgh
thing else a t alL Nothmg qutte'Wre it has ever, I beheve, dlstmct~on,the sure warranty of the ph~losopher and
happened before
humanlst He, above all others, approximates to Plato's
HUGHDE SEL~NCOUZT
"synoptic man " Your enterpnse in a "Havelock Elhs
number" does hlgh credlt to you, and I hope the number
Connecticut
w d do justwe to Havelock E k s I wlsh you all success
I have always had the greatest admiration for Have- m your work
J ~ ~ I LW
U ~ H U
lock Ell16 both as a wnter and as a man H e seems t o me
Birth Control Remew
Havelock Ellis
A Guide to Our Generation
IS unlque in the history of human so- for chaotic relat~ons,dlvorced from splendld sentiW e have for the first tlme in human ments, but he has been able and wlllmg to place the
history come into the possession of a body of sclen- proper d e g ~ e eof einphasls upon our sexual starvatific mformatlon and a type of crltlcal schola~shlp tlon m Anglo-Saxon lands, our aesthetlc shortcornwhlch has enabled us to d~vestourselves of fear of lngs m thls field, and our tradltlonal taboos which
the supernatural as the guide to conduct and to prevent us from a sclentific handlmg of even me&abandon the hope of spiritual lmmortal~tyas the cal and sociolog~calproblems relatmg to sex Morechlef mcentlve to human effort I n the place of over, he has possessed the courage to set forth hls
these, the enhghtened cltlzen has mtroduced wholly convlctlons m am~ablebut uncompromlsmg form
Fortunately, he has combmed enhghtment with
secular criteria of the good hfe and regards true
morality as that type of conduct which leads to the common sense and has been neither half-baled m
s
most efficient and happy hfe heie on earth Secular his doctrlnes nor gone off half-cocked m h ~ eupresconceptions and objectives have replaced supernat- slon of them I n his wrltmgs we see good sense,
ural fears and eschatological Interests I f t h ~ sbe born of long personal experience, u n ~ t e dwith sound
the case, then we must provide ourselves wlth new mastery of sclentfic facts and a fine appreclatlon of
forms of social y l d a n c e m the place of the old and the element of beauty m life and 1t.s adjustments
discarded rubrics of supernatural relig~on Thls wh~chhas not been equalled among Brit~shwrlters
y ~ d a n c emust be drawn from the best blologlcal, smce the Third Earl of Shaftesbury Not only
psychological, sociolog~caland aesthetic informa- have hls doctrmes been dlstmgulshed for their Iaudtion and attitudes I n this process of provldmg able juncture of science, sense and art, but his conguidance for man m the secular era the theologian trol of llterary expression of a high order has enwlll have no part, though he may well co-operate, if abled hlm to expound hls news wlth a maxlmum of
enhghtened, m the application of the new codes of effect and a mmlmum of offense There have been
s
to the many writers on sexology m recent years who have
conduct It is because Havelock E l l ~ seems
writer to have been one of the foremost workers for attempted to ldentlfy themselves w ~ t hHavelock
all these thmgs (1) the secular attitude towards Ellls, but none have attained to hls unlque combmahfe, ( 2 ) the provision of sclentific guldance as the tlon of uncompromlsmg mtellectual mtegrlty and
basls for conduct, and (3) the recogn~tionthat surprlsmg urbanlty and d~gnltyof expression
Therefore, if there IS any one livmg person to
sclence and technology must be tempered and explolted by aesthetics, that the wnter regards n l r whom the wrlter would refer the modern generation
E l l ~ sas the most representative and Important of for gudance as to Ideals and methods it is Havelock
those to whom the present generatlon must turn for Ellis I n hls wr~tmgsthey would find the emanciguidance Others have, perhaps, made more Im- pat~onwh~chthey crave and also that h e sense
portant specialized and technical contributions to of balance, polse and aesthetlc control whlch the
some narrow department of research mto the good younger generatlon notoriously lacks today When
life of the future, but, so far as the writer is aware, Havelock Ellis supplants Douglas Fairbanks, Paul
no other person exempl~fiesso broadly and so com- Wluteman, F l o Zlegfeld, Charhe Chaplm, Red
prehensively the new philosophy of the good hfe as Grange and ahas D r Gordon as the patron samt
Havelock Ellis T o h ~ sbreadth of tolerance and of thls generatlon, then mdeed we may hope for a
outlook he has added unusual attract~venessand truly civilized age
drgnitv of style, thus belng most effective m expoundmg the new doctrmes of llfe
oztp
we
T I S particularly gratlfymg that M r Elhs has
I possessed the keen discernment to allow hlm to
that the t r a d l t l o n a l rellglous attitude
towards seu and sexual e\pression, m the broadest
sense of the term, 1s perhaps the foremost obstacle
to human happiness In our age H e has never allowed himself to appear a sex-obsessed enthuslast
recognize
The r ~ g h to
t produce the men and women of the future
should be a pnvilege based on health, or the abll~tyto
care for ch~ldrenproperly, or an honest hkmg for chlldren People get the notion Blrth Control means no
children or a t the most, one o r two children Properly
applied it means noth~ngof the sort It goes In for regul a t ~ o nto the extent that ch~ldrenare not born into dmease, poverty and unhappiness --Contr&uted
therhood in Bondage
Some Appreciations of Margaret Sanger's New Book
APPRAISING I T S VALUE
I promlsed to wnte a word about "Motherhood In
Bondage" wh~hlchI do very gladly It is a soberly presented, overpoweringly convincing case record, the appearance of whlch ought to be a real event m the struggle here
m Amerlca against laws which barbarously deny mformatlon to men and women who long for ~t I am unpressed
by the evldence these letters gwe that the deslre for thls
information is, by the hlghest standards, leg~tlmateand
that to grant it would go so far to take mobherhood out
of bondage
NORMAN
THOMAS
OUT OF BONDAGE
B
EFORE me hes one of the most revolutionary docus
a collection
ments ever pubhshed It IS, on ~ t face,
of letters chosen from among a quarter-mdhon or more,
recelved In the last ten years by Margaret Sanger assembled as a demonstration of the need of rescindmg
the laws whlch now forbid even the medical profession
from g m n g mformatlon about the prevention of concept~on It is called "Motherhood In Bondage"* and 1s
introduced by an appeal for sense and decency by Margaret Sanger If you read one or two of the letters and
feel the ignorance and panlc that he behlnd them you mll
undoubtedly be moved to a warm pity for human beings
so desperately ensnared If you read them all you m11 be
stlrred t o wrath and shame Taken separately each letter
1s a plea for help, together they become a shout of protest The dynamm effect of hundreds and thousands of
emotional outbursts gathered Into a single explosion 1s
ternfying and hopeful Such feehng, so strong and so
despalnng, rooted In the deep centers of energy and hfe,
pushmg u p and burstmg out under such ~rreslstiblepressure-thls, ~tseems certaln, must finally shatter the forces
that oppose it, backed though they are by gods and hobgobhns and all the more genteel forms of fear
Those who read Andre Slegfned's hvely and penetratm g volume, "Amenca's Comlng of Age,"+ can hardly have
s
of a clvlhzatlon in whlch repression
forgotten h ~ plcture
and standardlzatlon, accepted without undue protest by
the vast complacwt majority, rob lndlvlduals of an opportunity to lwe and more ac<ordlng t o their personal
deslres Amencans-he
sald in effect-are people who
love to pass laws, especially restrictive laws Amencans
are people who msh t o make the11 neighbors do thmgs
they would not do themselves Americans are people who
conslder "the needs of the community supreme" Hence
A FRENCH WOMAN'S ESTIMATE
I cannot lmapne anythmg better in the way of d~ffusmg
knowledge than the stark publication of those awfd letters
They make one of the most heart-rendmg books I have
ever read in my llfe I congratulate you both on the
mtelhgence of the Idea and on your courage, but what
misery and what hopelessness the book reveals' I don't
belleve I had ever realized before m what a trap women
are in your country or to what a degree the work you do
IS necessary
All my knowledge of condltlons in France
polnts to a different lssue Religious tradltlons seem t o be,
taking them generally, muchmore enfeebled than In Amerlca
and the ways and means of avoldlng maternity, whether
by precautions or abortion, ten thousand times more common and more known by men as well as by women I
don't mean to say that they are either legal-you know by
experience how strict the French laws are in that connection-or
devold of danger, but even m remote countrysides, the people have some knowledge of them and most
big familles are the results, not of utter lmposslbility of
avoldmg pregnancy but of religous convlctlons that defin~tely prevent the women from resortmg to certain
measures So that even when the matenal condltlons ansmg from the blrth of too many chddren are distressing,
the moral despalr, the horror and lassitude deplcted m
the letters you publlsh are not the same
Also ~t is a revelatlon for a European, such as I for
example, accustomed to think of Amer~caas a land of
lmmense prosperity, to reahze how poor people can be,
how far from health, how appalhngly overworked, in farms
and away from towns You've shown plctures of destltution such as I thought could only be found in the worst
parts of emlgratlng Europe Most of these poor women
in Amerlca seem to be married off as the Arabs are before
they are out of adolescence
When I was in Africa I used to speak and wrlte agamst
such an lnfamous practlce untd I was exhausted I s it
posslhle that condltlons In the States are as horrible as
that
I congratulate you on your work and W I S ~you success
mth all my heart
ODETTEKUEN,Gradde A M , France
prohibltlon, hence restncted immigration, h e n c ~ v e n
more partlculanly - eugenics "If you v m t the United
States," sald M Siegfned, "you must not forget your
"
Bible, but you must also take a treatlse on eugenlcs
He sought to Identify the Birth Control movement m t h
the advocates of the supremacy of the Protestant N o r d ~ c
But here, I beheve, Mr Siegfned was betrayed by hls
eagerness to make everythmg fit smoothly and evenly mto
B~rthControl Revrero
h s pattern of represslon Undoubtedly many eugenlsts
support Blrth Control
But when we conslder M
Slegfned's "typical Amencan"
we find h m sohdlg
agalnst Blrth Control
If reason were t o prevad the Blrth Control League
would be able to count on the sohd backmg of the fundamentallst majonty But loge 1s not a vlce of the fundamentallst He 1s agalnst Blrth Control H e detests the
very words He shrlnks from the thought behlnd the
words Blrth Control can hardly be considered without
conslderlng sex, and sex should be suppressed and ignored
as far as posslble
Besldes, says the fundamentahst
under hls breath, a h a t wlll become of morals ~f people
can sm mthout fear? And so, ~f pushed to the cholce, the
conventional and plous Nordlc Protestant wdl refuse even
the fundamental l o g ~ cof self-preservation, whlch seems to
hlm to ~mply,not regImentatlon and coerclon as M Slegfned would malntaln, but new and alarmmg forms of freedom By hls different route, he arnves a t the same attltude toward Blrth Control as that malntalned by the
Cathollc church
And the blgots of both falths are nght. they do well
to fear the effect of a mdespread knowledge of Blrth Control methods A t present such knowledge 1s ln the hands
of the upper classes-through bootlegge-nd
the effect
of ~t has been to change the hablts and morals and economlc status of mlddle-class women, and to modrfy almost
beyond recogrnhon the nuddle-class home Some of thla
knowledge gets through to the poorer classes But, hke
bootlegged hquor, ~tis a p t to be poisonous-the more so,
the cheaper the bootlegger So the women of the workmg
class are dymg from the efFects of drugs and abortions,
when they are not dymg from the eiTect.8 of too many
chddren, and a bltter, passionate clamor for f a ~ treatr
ment 1s beglnnlng to sound through muffl~ng layers of
poverty and represslon Not for the sake of the dwmdhng
Nordlc, but for thew own health and happmess and securlty and freedom and for them chddren's future, these
women are gomg to have what they want If you doubt
~ tread
, "Motherhood In Bondage "
FEEDA
KIBCHWEY,
~n The N a t m (N Y )
A New Ellis Book
T0
MOST of us a man who finds keen dellght In buylng
and weanng costly, dellcate hngerie, elaborate evemng gowns and all the fussy fernmine tnmmlngs that go
m t h such thmgs 1s an unpleasing patholog~calspecimen
The vast majonty of men thlnk of the male mode of llfe
a s so f a r preferable to a woman's that E m w m (a word
suggested to Elhs by the behavlor of Charles-GenenBve,
the Chevalter d'Eon and the subject of the last volume of
h s studres of sex) IS d~fficultto make real as a posslble
personal expenence This 1s because the rank and file
are In bondage t o tnbal definltlon, appraisal and tabu If
the tnbe expects us to g a g a t pork and to reject ~t as
filthy o r to hate a people upon whom we have lmposed war,
we are not mwardly free to think or to feel othemse about
~t I n matters pertamng to sex, tnbal expectations so
bmd us to adverse emotional evaluations of certam longmgs and practlses that even our medlcal men must use
speclal tongs pronded by pathology when they msh t o
make studles In t h ~ sfield
Havelock EIhs 1s not pnmardy a student of sexual
pathology, because, perhaps, he does not need to be I t
1s a falrly safe assertion that he has acqulred a hlgher
degree of Inner freedom than has been enjoyed by any
other sane, well-balanced man of modern tlmes At any
rate, he never seems to need the pathologist's tongs when
he trles to feel hls way into the longings, attltudcs and
overt practlses of even the most unusual of h ~ sfellowcreatures From hls standpoint the Eonlst, although &exually abnormal, 1s aesthetically correct In hls attltude toward the ways and dress of the opposlte sex Thus the
male Eonlst finds hngene so much more pleasmg than
B V D 'a and female curves so much more dehghtful t o
the eye than male angulantles that he longs to be a woman
On the psychologcal surface of thmgs he 1s merely respondmg to an aesthetlc motlve whlch leads the majonty
of Amencan men to take them daily shave
Eoxusm 1s not to be confused m t h sexual inversion
(homosexuahty) I n ~ t pure
s
form there IS no conscious
tendency to seek love from persons of the same sex It 1s
charactenstlc of Elhs' approach to all such problems
that he makes much of aesthetlc motlves m seeklng t o explam the E o n ~ s mthout
t
shghtlng such other posslble factors as an endocrine unbalance or the unconscious mechanIsms m t h whlch Freud has made us acquainted
H E R E can be no doubt that Elhs has a comprehenT s w e grasp of Freud's dmovenes, and that, ln the
mam, he 1s lnchned to accept psychoanalysis m t h wholehearted enthusiasm On the other hand, he has too
scholarly a mmd and is too clear and reahstlc a thlnker
not to have detected Freud's many lapses from a proper
respect for the rules of sclentlfic evldence
The great Enghsh sexologmt hkes to spin theones of
hls own m explanation of what he observes, but he does
so m t h h ~ tongue
s
In his check, and m t h no hard and fast
loyalties to even the most comfortmg of baslc hypotheses
Thls 1s a circumstance for which I am profoundly grateful Elhs' seven volumes of Studres an the Psychology of
Ser are, to my mnd, precisely what we need to balance
Freud's contrlbutlons This 1s well illustrated In the fifth
chapter of the volume under renew He there proposes a
method of dream-study whlch he regards a s complemen-
t a r y to Freud's method of dream-analys~s It 1s E l l d
"dream-synthes~s", wh~chhe hkens unto geography because lt 1s comprehens~velydescnpt~ve,works from above
downward, leads to mferences wh~chhave a h ~ g hdegree
of venfiab~l~ty
and serves as a check on dream-analys~s
Thls In no sense ~mphesa reject~onof the psychoanalvt~c
method, wh~ch,he says, works from below upward, l ~ k e
geology, and leads to more revolut~onary speculat~ons
than dream-synthes~s
E l h q u ~ t efrankly states that dream-analys~s1s a more
thorough method than the one he proposes as a complementary d~sc~pllne,
throughout h ~ seventh
s
volume he dmplays profound respect for Freud's ~ n s ~ g h t sand
, yet I
cannot escape the convlct~onthat h ~ sgrasp of psychoanalys~s1s pnmanly ~ntellectualrather than expenent~al
T h ~ statement
s
calls for ~mmedmteamphficat~on
I t may sound hke a recantatmn for me to sav that,
among contemporary students of human sex problems I
am In an un~quelyfavorable p o s ~ t ~ oto
n apprec~atethe
hfference between an mtellectual assent to Freud's findmgs and a felt real~zation of them essent~al valrd~ty
Most of my profess~onalhfe as a psych~atnsthas been
devoted t o objectlve (or, to use Ell~s'metaphor, "geograph~cal") studtes of human and an~malbehav~or I
held myself t o a starkly c n t ~ c a lobjectlvlsm long after
I had gained a reasonable degree of freedom from unconscious motwes for demand~ngsounder evldence of any and
all alleged subjective facts than, In the nature of thmgs,
the psychoanalyt~cmethod seems t o make poss~ble Years
of ted~ousexpenmentat~onm t h objective methods left
me no cho~cebut to apply them when, In 1924, an opport u n ~ t ycame t o make prolonged and intenswe studles of
manta1 sex problems
mg mto the conscloua expenences of those whose sex hvea
dev~atefrom a convent~onallyaccepted "norm" And yet,
In my oplmon, ~talso suggests that he has never perm~tted
h~mselfreally to know how ~twould feel to be the L'geolog~st"type of explorer w ~ t hFreud as a p d e When
you follow Freud In explanatory excursmns under the surface you have often got to pass from known fact to d ~ r e c t
expenence of ~ t meanmg
s
Elhs 1s too mse, and too tolerant of other h a b ~ t sof thought than h ~ sown, to reject
what Freud burnmglv feels to be true, but even when he
accepts a psychoanalyt~cfindlng as convmcmg, ~t seems
to be only because he has tested ~t m t h h ~ ~ntellect
s
and
not because he has also made ~t a matter of analystanalysand d ~ r e cexpenence
t
I
AM GRATEFUL t o Havelock E h s on behalf of all
psych~atrlstswho may ever feel a need of outs~de,unprejudiced checks on what them own Inner expcnencea
(denved from analyt~crapport m t h pat~ents)may lead
s
them to infer and appralse as ~ubjectlvefact T h ~ renew
IS bemg made m the m ~ d s tof a psychoanalyt~cresearch
wh~chhas completely won me over to Freud, but I am too
old m the ways of objectlvlsm t o be bhnd to a danger
wh~chhes In welt for all of us who follow h m , but lack his
gemus for pat~entlytestmg tns~ghtswh~chcan as eas~ly
be spunous as they can be sound Every psychoanalyst
has w~thmh ~ ma chorus of siren voices wh~chmpel h m to
proceed forthmth to anchorage In a port where h ~ sown
hunches, p~ecedout by speculat~on,provlde a bl~ssfulstate
of final psychodynam~cunderstandmg When the chorus
1s loudest and most seductive he needs t o be lashed to the
wlse Geographer's mast untd he can cool off The Geographer's Studtea m the Psychology of Sex supply many
stout cords of fact and safely logcal mference therefrom
H E SEQUEL to all this 1s here made pubhc for the I feel sure that these cords were not woven of unconsc~ous
first t m e as a kmd of tnbute to Havelock Elhs, the resistances t o what psychoanalys~shas t o teach They
very great and understandmg student of human nature are the products of a gemus whlch 1s genu~nelycompleSuch a tnbute 1s mtnns~callyas un~mportantas was the mentary to Freud's genius Smce psychoanalyt~chterat advlce
mdow's nute, but ~tis also of a kmd m t h the mdow's m ~ t e ture 1s w~delyread by the l a ~ t y ,here 1s a b ~ of
wh~ch1s meant for everybody it ~ s n ' tsafe t o know Freud
m ~ t ~mportance
s
to the gwer
Dunng the last several years, Increasing expenence a s mthout also knomng E h s
It 1s beyond the scope of the present remew t o enter
both analyst and analysand have been so steaddy movmg me toward a completely Freudmn outlook on human mto a hscuss~onof the second sect~onof the last chapter
psychodynam~csthat I must now class~fymyself as a in "Eon~sm and Other Stud~es" I n it wdl be found a
Freudmn I have found ~t ~mposs~ble
to s ~ at t the head summery of Elhs' npened judgment concerning the fundaof the analyt~ccouch day after day, hstemng to my pa- mental problems of marnage as a n m s t ~ t u t ~ o nIt ought
t~ents' product~onsand mentally checkmg them agamst to be separately pnnted for the mdest poss~bledistnFreud's wrhngs mthout undergomg conversion to a behef b u t ~ o n Certa~nlyno person who 1s marned, or who exIn the v a h d ~ t yof h ~ method
s
and the h ~ g hprobabhty of pects to be marned, or who has a chdd who may some day
h ~ mferences
s
T h s 1s the first t m e m my 6fty years of fall mto matrimony, ought to remam m p o r a n c e of such
pomt of view Proponents of B ~ r t hControl mll
hfe than I have been "converted" to any behef whatsoever a c~v~hzed
Elhs' seventh volume of stud~es1s only added ev~dence find In it an ~ncomparableargument In support of the conof what everybody has known for a long t m e t h a t he tent~onthat the cause to whwh the BIBTH CONTBOL
1s a "geograph~cal" explorer of monumental fearlessness, REVIEWIS devoted IS of prunary mportance to human
lndustry and scholarsh~p,and a man whose own Inner free- progress
G V HAMILTON,
MD
dom pernuts h ~ mto enter w ~ t hsympathet~cunderstand-
T
Bzrth Control Rewero
HAVELOCK ELLIS AND THE DRAMA
T
H E R E IS just a chance that a m d the vanety and
grandeur of M r Havelock Elhs' gifts to human hfe
and happiness, one service may be overlooked, not because
it is small, for it is great, not because its benefits are
exhausted, for they have gone on ~ncreaslngnow for more
than forty years, but because those who now reap the
pecuniary #benefitof Che work have long since removed from
it the name of the man who gave it birth It was in 1886
that Havelock Ellis sent to V~zetelly and Company, the
publishers, a suggest~onfor the series of old Engllsh plays
known as the Merma~dSeries, and, as M r Houston Peterson has recorded, ~t was Havelock EUls who d ~ dall the
work H e planned the senes, he was its first general
editor, he edited the first volume, the plays of Christopher
Marlowe, he brought lnto the scheme the other best critics
of the day I t IS, ult~mately,thanks to Havelock Ellis
that the best plays of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are easdy access~bleto all readers, and that it is
difficult nowadays t o realize how little known bhey were
to the general public, and how hard to be obtained And
sometimes, when I find thls or that smart youngster claiming the Restoration Drama as a 'Lpost-war" discovery of
which the benefited V~ctorians were mcapable, I srmle,
thinking of Havelock Ellis in the far distant eighties, and
s to mean to us Had he never
of all that series of h ~ was
wrxtten a lme on sex, he would still be eminent among the
finer intellects of our time for his literary criticism, but,
agam, had he never written a line of literary crit~cism,the
man who began the faithful repr~ntingof our old dramatists in inexpensive and unlimited editions should be honored for a very great service to mental freedom and enJoymen t
HABOLD
CHILD
IMPRESSIONS AND COMMENTS Third (and Final)
Senes By Havelock Ellis
Houghton M a n
Company, Boston and New York
W H I S 1s a new popular ed~tionof the beautiful book
1 which was first published m 1924 and was reviewed
In these pages by Mrs Sangerg Havelock Ellis considers this his most personal work and it is doubly valuable therefore, not only as the final senes of Impressions
and Comments but as the nearest approach to an autob~ographywhich he 1s hkely to make (At least there has
not been the slightest sign of the autobiography wh~chwas
rumored several years ago ) It is simply a collection of short
analyses, prctures, prose poems, noted down a t random between April, 1920, and August, 1923 Although lt does
not achieve the soaring eloquence of several sectrons in the
precedmg volume, the style is perhaps more continually
lovely Especially noteworthy are the passages on the
last phases of genius and the vlsion of Pmspero
H P
T H E BANKRUPTCY OF MARRIAGE, by V F Calverton Macaulay, New York, $3 00
POPULAR &scussion of various present-day factors
aficting sex mores, wntten in an mterestrng and
very frank style The author commendably inslats on
wholly ehminating the tra&tional conspiracy of silence
and hypocrisy regarding sex, and therefore much of h ~ s
evidence and argument may seem only negatively cntical
Perhaps there 1s too much rehance upon "bankruptcv
"
rather than a more constructwe evaluation of marrrage
But more somber means of saylng much the same things
as Mr Calverton courageously portrays, have gone unnoticed
Some of the "hlgh points" of the book follow Woman
has been "monogamous" not because of anythrng inherent
in her nature, but because man has forced her to be The
family was not the basis, but rather the outgrowth, of our
economic order Our present economic order is postponing marnage beyond reasonable time for expression of
the sex impulse Modern youth in its jazz age has adopted
the automob~leand "bootleg" contraceptives as measures of
escaping former binding restraints between the sexes Modernyouth ismaklngitsownmoral code, founded upongreater
freedom of the sex impulse Thus Companionate Marnage
Thus the dsregard of former controls of authoritative
religion,-and
so on The present hfe of German and
Sovlet Russian youth is rev~ewedto suggest a possible solution of outworn sexual codes However, suggests M r
Calverton, "sex has become an obsession" of the age,
and "we must not challenge sex stupi&ties by sex exaggerations"
Mr Calverton, who wntes from Baltimore, Maryland,
is also author of "The Newer Sprnt" and "Sex Expression
~nLiterature", and e d t o r of "The Modern Quarterly"
WAYNEEVANS
A
BOOKS RECEIVED
NATUEEAND NUBTUBE,P a r t I Their Influence Upon
Intelligence, The Twenty-Seventh Yearbook of the
National Soctety for the Study of Education, Bloommgton, Illlnol~
IMPBESSIONS
AND COMMENTS,
(third series) by Havelock
Ellis Houghton MlWin Co , New York $2 25
OUROWNTIMES,
by H a r m o n C Thomas and Wdliam A
Harnm Vanguard Press, New York
EMOTIONSOF NORMALPEOPLE, by William Moulton
Marston Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York
$5 50
UNDEBSTAND~NG
INDIA,
by Gertrude Marvin Wdlama
Coward-McCann, New York $3 50
How WE INHEBIT,
by Edgar Altenburg Henry Holt 8
Co , New York $3 00
GEGENDEN GEBAB-ZWANG,
by Em1 Hollein BerhnCharlottenburg
WOMANHOOD
AND M n a s u c ~by
, R~chardHarley Bentley
and Co London, England 86 6d
February, 1989
Correspondence
TO H E L P I N CHINA
We publrsh below two letters on a n arttcle recently
pblrshed vn the REVIEW They show how w d e zs the range
Berkeley, Cal
of optnron among the readers of the same perrodical and
T h e first number of the BIRTH CONTROLREVIEWhas
the supporters of the same cause We have pubbshed come, full of mterest and deep-cuttmg ~ n f o r m a t ~ o nI am
dtscwsrons of marnage by o u r own generatton, we have
exceedmgly grateful to you f o r puttmg me on the l ~ s t
noted the contnbutton of J u d g e Landsey and others toward
I shall be able t o use these facts in my writing in C h ~ n a
the solutron of the problem of youth I n farrness to a
w ~ t hgood effect I shall m f o m ~ o upon
u
my return next
rpokesman f o r youth we felt that we must glue space to
fall to Chum
M r Schmolhawen, who ss the author of "Why We MzsTwo days ago I heard Margaret Sanger speak H e r
behave" and co-edator m t h V F Calserton of a forthcomwag voltlme "Ses zn Caullazatzon " We wonder whether st strongest pomt was her readmg the list of undes~rables
o n and then askmg ~f we are
u the substance of the arttcle that offends o r the cholce of kept out by ~ m m ~ g r a t ~laws,
to
produce
such
w
~
t
h
~
our
n
own m ~ d s t I w ~ s hthere could
I
t
rs
szgnrficant
t
h
a
t
the
cntacertam o b n o n o w words
crsm ts wrttten by a woman a n d that the artacle zs dtsfigured have been books and your REVIEW lmmedmtely ava~lable
t
the meet~ng
by the seemtngly gmturttous use of the Anglo-Saxon to buy r ~ g h after
equtvalent of the word prostttute, a word partzcularly
abhorrent to women, a s rt rs most rnttmotely assocaated
wzth her mnral, soctal and rntellectual degradatton through
the ages
A WELCOME L E T T E R
Edator
Edrtor
New York
I have been s member of the League for many years,
Thank you f o r the copy of the BIRTH CONTROL
REVIEW,
and have never, u n t ~ lnow, had occasion to blush for ~t
T h ~ sREVIEW for October contams the only dlsgustmg wh~chreached me a few days ago I have kept m touch w ~ t h
a r t ~ c l eI have ever read In ~ t aud
,
I cannot understand thls movement f o r some tune past, and h a v ~ n gread q u ~ t e
how ~tcould have been allowed It w ~ l ldo us more harm widely on the subject, I need not tell you how much this
REVIEWhas mterested
than our ~ g n o r a n tlaws, and undo much of Mrs Sanger's copy of the October BIRTHCONTROL
wonderful work T h e article is "Sex Among the Moderns" me
by Samuel Schmalhausen
FANNIE
L ELLIOTT
Edrtor
I have just read a n a r t ~ c l eon "Modern M a r r ~ a g e " ~n
the J a n u a r y "Forum" and I do hope you mll find room
s
In the REVIEWf o r a paragraph or two from ~t T h ~ brief
but comprehenstve study, by John M~ddletonM u r r y and
Dr James Carruthers Young 1s r ~ g h m
t hne w ~ t hthe work
of the Amencan B r t h Control League f o r ~t recogmzes,
a s M r s Sanger d ~ years
d
ago, t h a t a n enl~ghtenedconcept
of sex should accompany all true Blrth Control work I n
t h ~ sconnection p e r m ~ tme t o congratulate the BIRTH
CONTROLREVIEWon havlng pubhshed, m your October
Issue, the stlmulat~ngand provocatwe summary of Samuel
A Schmalhausen's "Sex Among the Moderns " T h e 11d 1s
off and ~f all w ~ l ljom In makmg the best poss~bleuse of
the fire and flame, the react~onaneswdl find f a r less smoke
and soot to complaln about T h e Blrth Control movement
thrwes on controversy and I hope the REVIEWwill become
mcreasmgly controvers~alIn character
G C
I was also Interested In the forthcommg book of Samuel
D Schmalhausen "The Sexual Revolut~on" Would you
k ~ n d l yadvise me as t o the date of release of t h ~ sbook, and
whence ~t may be obtamed?
EPILOGUE
I have seen the form of Llfe, her face was mme,
She whispered to me words of heavenly m ~ r t h ,
She l a ~ dmy head between her breasts' w ~ d egtrth,
All round about me were her 11mbs t h a t shme,
She pressed for me the stream of mllk d w n e
( T h a t no l ~ p stwlce shall find of equal worth) ,
And clasped me once, and flung me across the earth,
Drunk w ~ t ht h a t muslc, mad m t h t h a t new wme
A l ~ t t l ewh~leto-day I am the cry
Of pulses, that from L ~ f ewlthm me beat,
T o tell of thmgs that come, of thmgs t h a t d ~ e
South Carolma
I p r a y you hear, the d a y IS passlng by,
L e t me congratulate you on the December REVIEW-~t
And soon my song ends, soon I go to meet
was most excellent I send greetmgs for 1929 and I hope
T h e s~lenceIn the shadow of L ~ f e ' sfeet
the d a v 1s not f a r off when the B ~ r t hControl League w~ll
g a m ~ t noble
s
cause
R
HAVELOCK
ELLIS
-
B:rth Control Revaew
A PORTRAIT OF HAVELOCK ELLIS
H
fic clrcles, a ploneer In a field whloh a t all times has been
fert~lesoil for explo~tat~on,
and l ~ v l n gIn a country where
exposltlon of the problems of sex has mvar~ablymet with
distrust and oppos~tlon,he was frequently subjected to
susplclon, but nothlng daunted, and w ~ t ha courage and
slncerlty wh~chmay well be emulated by other reformers
he brought sunshme and a l r to the sacred precincts of scx,
thus accompllshmg h ~ stask and contr~butrngsomething
t o the welfare of humanlty
OUSTON P E T E R S O N gwes us a portralt of one of
the most unusual men of modern t ~ m e s Havelock
E l l ~ sIS almost an anomaly I n a n age when everybody
shouts he whispers, and hts wh~sper1s magn~fieda s ~f by
megaphone It has easdy been heard round the world
Ellls's mmd developed from youthful enthus~asmt o
detached conslderatlon of the emotions, but he never forgot
the underlying human elements In all literature
JOSEPH
COLLINSm T b N m York Evensng Post
HIS profound veneration for Goethe, h s apprecmtion
of Edward Carpenter, hls mtense study of Hardy, h ~ s
numerous contacts wlth John Addmgton Symonds, reveal
how hls mmd developed Once overwhelmed by "Aurora
ELLIS' VISION OF PARADISE
Le~gh," he was later able t o d~scover the novel~st as
h~storlan,and t o realme t h a t "sclence and morals, so f a r
F o r we have t o be on our guard-and
that IS our final
from destroylng, have re-created fictlon " A fine q u a l ~ t y problem, perhaps the most d f i c u l t and complex of allof "mtellectual humll~ty," whlch produced not abasement lest our efforts for the regeneratlon of the race lead us to a
but a tmnkle m hu eyes, came mto the best of Ell~s's mechanical and mater~al~stsc
concept~onof hfe, to the conwntmgs
ceptlon of a 11fe regulated by codes and statutes, and adjuRobust men, overflowmg m t h v ~ t a h t y ,do not become dlcated In law courts Better an unregenerate l ~ f ethan
phdosophers Havelock E l l ~ s although
,
endowed w ~ t hgood such a regeneratlon' F o r freedom 1s the breadth of hfe, joy
health, remalned a man of contemplation rather than is the prune t o n ~ cof hfe, and no regeneratlon IS worth
actton H e IS h~mselfthe best example of subllmabon t h a t strlvmg for wh~chfalls t o Increase the total sum of freedom
M r Peterson brlngs forward
and of j o y Those who are worklng for r a c ~ a regeneratlon
l
t
own
Havelock E l l ~ sseems t o be bhe outstandtng example of must make t h ~ svery clear, o r they d ~ s c r e d ~them
the gentle philosopher who never loses pat~ence Having alms T h s 1s why ~t1s necessary, In connection wlth raclal
made certaln observat~ons,he lets the world accept or reject regeneratlon, to deal w ~ t hhterature, wlth art, wlth rehthem HIS is not the "magn~ficent energy and bellicose @on, for ~tis only m so f a r a s these thmgs, and such ae
enthuslasm" of S~gmundFreud M r Peterson admlts that these, are rendered larger and freer and more joyous that a
after "Freud's flashlng pages" the wntlngs of E l l ~ son the regenerated llfe will have 1t.s heightened value It 1s useless
psychology of sex may seem tame and cold In comparison t o work for the commg of a better race ~f we Impose upon
s
have forged
H e has no panaceas t o offer B u t hls wnbngs have colored ~tthe task of brealung the fetters ~ t fathers
Llcence, mdeed, IS always evd, for ~t ~nvolvesa reckless
the thought of a generat~on
E l l ~ shas g v e n us a new perspective H e has applled mdlfference t o the good of others B u t hcense, so f a r from
s
foe T o permlt
hls d e n s e c u r ~ o s ~ tabout
y
man and gwen a sympathet~c bemg the ally of freedom, 1s ~ t dcadhest
for the
explanahon of man's strange a c t ~ o n s To-day, surty-nme h e n c e t o the few 1s t o make freedom ~mposs~ble
years old, E l l ~ sIS "not bewildered by reheon, overawed many Order, self-control, sympathy, lntell~gent regulaby sclence and obsessed wlth sex H e 1s not made cynlcal tlon, are necessary In all the matters t h a t concern soclety
by man's amma1 o n g m and dusty end H e 1s not peevlsh, and the race, \because wlthout them there can be no freeb ~ t t e rand ashamed t o be a t peace" H e has found hfe dom I n the great garden of llfe ~tIS not otherwtse than m
worth hvlng not by rejectmg the world but by seekmg to our p u b l ~ cgardens W e repress the l~censeof those who,
t o gratlfy thew own ch~ldlsho r perverted desires, would
understand ~t
pluck
u p the shrubs o r trample on the flowers, but ~n so
HARRY
HANSEN
m the N m York World
doing we achleve freedom and joy for all If m our efforts
to better s o c d c o n d ~ t ~ o nand
s t o raise the level of the race
we seek t o cultivate tile sense of order, t o encourage symSUNSHINE AND AIR
pathy and fores~ght,to pull u p racial weeds by the roots, ~t
ODAY there IS perhaps no better example of the IS not tl-at we may k ~ l lfreedom and joy, but rather that
s securmg and Increasapotheosis of harmony than Havelock Ellis I t per- we may mtroduce the c o n d ~ t ~ o nfor
Ing
freedom
a
d
joy
I
n
these
matters,
mdeed, the gardener
meated h ~ llfe
s from the age of nlneteen and found express
1s our symbol and our g u d e T h e beglnnlng
mon ~n h ~ us n t ~ n n gdevotlon and consecration through five m h ~ garden
decades to a work for wh~chhe felt h~mselfdestmed HIS of the world IS figured a s an ordered and yet free l ~ f eof
record IS extraordinary and hls achievement unlque, m joy m a garden All our efforts for the regeneratlon of the
t h a t ~twas ne~thersanctioned by approval from the volce race can be but a feeble attempt t o brlng a httle nearer
of authollty nor exalted by the bestowal of honorary that vlslon of Paradme
degrees Smgularly d~vorcedfrom the h e r a r c h y of sc~entl- --From "The Problem of Race Regeneration," by Havelock Ellis
T
Prospect and Retrospect
The Annual Meeting of the American Birth Control League
CROWDED and enthus~ast~c
audlence gathered to mtroduced last year t o enable p h y s ~ c ~ a ntos p v e contracelebrate the opening of a new year in the Bmth ceptive adv~cefor other reasons than "cure or prevent~on
Control movement a t the Annual Meetmg of the Amencan of dlsease" was mtroduced ~n the New York Assembly a t
B ~ r t hControl League The meetmg was held a t the Town Albany on January 5, by Assemblyman John W Remer,
who, a t the request of Mrs Jones gave an account of h e
Hall, New York, and lunch was served dunng ~ t progress
s
s
for bang wllllng to
L ~ t t l et ~ m ewas occup~edmth the formal bus~ness,but the interest IU B ~ r t hControl, h ~ reasons
vanous reports of work durmg the past year were recewed sponsor the bill, and the work that would be necessary for
s
mth much applause and s a t ~ s f a c t ~ o n Four Directors ~ t passage
The report of the Execut~veSecretary, Mrs P B P
were elected to fill the places of those whose term had exl already
p ~ r e d The only new name was that of Mrs Chauncey Huse, showed how great the Interest m the b ~ lhad
s
and
Hamlm of Buffalo, whose accession to the Board IS warmly become Many meetmgs had been held ~n ~ t support,
welcomed A kst of 143 actwe members, all of whom have endorsement had been secured from a large number of
proved themselves of value to the work of the League, was orgamzat~ons The hearty co-operat~onof the New York
reported by the Nomnatrng Commttee and elected by the State League of Women Voters, secured largely by the
castlug of a smgle ballot An Amendment t o the constl- efforts of Mrs R~chardB~lhngs,was felt to be part~cututron prondmg for "two o r more" V~ce-pres~dents
was larly valuable Three other orgamzat~onswh~chare g ~ v adopted Thls gwes hberty t o the Board to Increase the lug ~mportanthelp, are the New York Woman's City
number of V~ce-pres~dents
as the lncrease of work makes Club, the Jumor League of New York C ~ t yand the B t y
Federat~onof Women's Clubs
des~rable
The mder work of the League was best illustrated by
Of the reports, those for the State Branches ~n New
Jersey and Connect~cutstand out as exemplrfy~ngthe na- the tours made by D r James F Cooper, Med~calD~rector
t ~ o n a lcharacter of the League and the gradual spread Durmg the SIX months that he spent 1x1 the field, lectunng
of the movement from ~ t center
s
m New York New Jersey for the League, he spoke a t 61 medlcal meetmgs and conferences ~n 15 states, ch~efly~n the South and M~ddle
IS the more advanced, for the Branch there 1s fully organlzed and the Chn~c,or Maternal Health Center, wh~chwas West, and a t 15 lay meetmgs, reachmg total aud~encesof
estabhshed ~n Newark ~n May, is domg excellent work over 7,000 The marked change m the a t t ~ t u d eof the
Fdty-five percent of the pat~entsa t the C l ~ m cIU 1928 doctors towards Bmth Control 1s dlustrated by the fact
were treated free, and fifty percent were sent t o the C l ~ n ~ cthat D r Cooper was able to have an average of one me&by hosp~tals,soc~alagencles and p h y s ~ c ~ a n sThe Chmc cal meetmg, especially called to hear Ium, every two days
s lecture tour The doctors were eager to
funct~onsentrrely separately from the League and 1s man- dunng h ~ last
aged by a med~calcomm~ttee,the League actmg only a s secure informat~on concernmug contracept~onand mllmgly made the effort to get au&ences together
trustee
The League, Mrs Jones announced, 18 inten&ng dunng
I n Connect~cut,a c t ~ n t ~ ehave
s stdl to be devoted t o
l e g d a t ~ v ework, a s the Connect~cutlaw, wh~chstnctly the comng year to follow up the m d c a l lectures of D r
prohtb~tsthe personal use of contracept~ves,prevents the Cooper, by sendmg orgarners mto the states where mteropenmg of c l ~ n ~ c sDoctors w~llnot assocmte themselves est has already been aroused, m t h a mew to the estabhshm t h a Cl~nrcwhich would admse ~ t patients
s
to commt a ment of cl~mcswhere the laws perm~t,and the mtroduct~on
cnme The State Branch has mtroduced a b ~ l to
l repeal of l e g d a t ~ o nmto states where the laws prevent doctors
c
How
t h ~ slaw and a L e g d a t ~ v eComm~ttee,headed by Mrs from givmg contracept~veadvlce t o c l ~ n ~pat~ents
Kathanne Houghton Hepburn, has been formed, m t h much work remalns to be done 1s mdlcated by the fact,
sub-comm~ttees~n 14 towns and cit~es,t o push the bill ln noted by D r Hannah Stone of the Chn~calResearch
the present sesslon of the Lepslature The prospects of Bureau, ~n her report, that there are a t present only 28
the b ~ l lare good and ~f ~tpasses, ~twill then be poss~ble Birth Control Centers in the whole of the Un~tedStates,
and that 38 States are st111 mthout any m d c a l center
to estabhsh cl~nics
I n New York State, the law already penults a hm~ted a t wh~chwomen can secure contraceptwe adv~ceand treatmeasure of B ~ r t h Control and the Clrncal Research ment The fact that there are now ~n extstence a s many
Bureau has now been IU emstence smce 1924 Dunng as 28 centers was gwen by D r Stone as shomng the great
1928, ~t was changed from ~ t pso s ~ t ~ oasn a Department of advance that B ~ r t hControl has made dunng the last five
years, but there are stdl tens of m~lkonsof American
the Amencan Brrth Control League and set on ~ t own
s
feet as an ~ndependentumt, m t h Margaret Sanger as its mothers for whom no pronsion of contracept~ve~nformat ~ o nhas yet been made, and the work of the Amencan
D~rector The League was thus set free for ~ t educas
t ~ o n a land legdative work A bill s ~ m ~ l at or the one
A
Bzrth Control Revzero
News Notes
INTERNATIONAL
NNOUNCEMENT 1s made by the World League for
Sexual Reform that its next Congress mll be held
In London, September 9 to 13 The Congress wlll have
the support not only of great European and Amencan students In thls field but of Bertrand Russell, H G Wells,
Arnold Bennett, Hugh Walpole, Mlles Malleson, Chve
Bell and Prof Carr-Saunders Subjects for dlscusslon
mll be Marriage Law Reform, Blrth Control, Prevention of Venereal Disease and Prostltutlon and Sex Censorship The Presidents of the Congress are August Fore1
(Switzerland), Havelock Elhs (England), and Magnus
Hirschfeld (Germany) The international committee 1s
made up of
England Dr Norman Hlure, Dora Russell, E S Jerdan,
A
U 8 A Dr Harry Benjamm, Dr W~llramRobmson, Margaret
Sanger, Canada Mrs Ahce Loeb, Qsrmany Dr Max Hodann,
Helnrlch Meng, Dr Helene Stocker, France Vlctor Marguerrtte,
G Hardy, Eugene Humhert, Rurrta Dr Batks, Alexandra Kollontay, Prof Pasche-Oserskr, Auatna Dr Frledjung, Prof Goldsche~d,Rosa Mayreder, Swttxerland Dr Brupbacher, CmechoBlovakaa Dr Bledel, Dr Hugo Bondy, I t d y Prof H ~ e h ,Holland Dr H Regge, Belgtum Dr Kempeneers, Bpacn Dr Juan
Fernen Perez, Japan Scando Se~taro,Prof M Suzukl, N o m a g
Dr Gelersvald, d w e d m Dr Bratt, Prof Cllverstople, Dr Alma
Sundquwt. Denmark Prof Jorgensen, Inga Junghanns, Dr
Ranulf, Iceland Red Gudmundson, Dr Olafsson, fithuanta Dr
Pnssmann, Egypt Dr A1 Salama, L b e n a Dr Schmeidenherger,
Argentme Prof Asnaurow, Else Jerusalem Chde Dr Ramon
Clases, B r ~ t ~ sIndra
h
Dr V L Parmar, Dr N Ramachardra
lyer, Federated dialay 8taler Dr L M Ram
2 The liberation of marrlage (and especlally dworce
from the present Church and State tyranny
3 Control of conception, so that procreation may be undertaken only dehberately, and m t h a due sense of
respons~blhty
4 Race betterment by the application of the knowledge
of Eugenlcs
5 Protection of the unmarried mother and the ~llegltlmate chdd
6 A rational attitude towards sexually abnormal persons, and especlally towards homosexuals, both male
and female
7 Prevention of prost~tutlonand venereal dlsease
8 Disturbances of the sexual ~mpulset o be regarded as
more or less patholopcal phenomena, and not, as In
the past, as cnmes, vlces or slns
9 Only those sexual acts to be considered cnmmal which
lnfrlnge the sexual rlghts of another person Sexual
acts between responsible adults, undertaken by mutual
consent, to be regarded as the pnvate concern of
those adults
1 0 Systematic sexual education
Subscriptions to the Congress (one gulnea) and donatlon for prehmlnary expenses should be addressed to Mrs
Dora Russell, Telegraph House, Hartmg, Petersfield,
England Further part~cularsabout the program and
plans may be obtained from the Hon Secretary D r Norman Halre, 127 Harley Street, London, W I
The first Congress of the League, whose full tltle 1s World
League for Sexual Reform on a Sclentlfic Basls, was held
In Copenhagen In July, 1928* The alms of the League
are expressed In a general resolution carned a t the end of
UNITED STATES
that Congress whlch read
New
York
"The Second International Congress tor Sexual ReH E Blrth Control Bdl was introduced in the New
form on a Scient~ficBasls appeals to the legislatures,
York Assembly by Mr John Remer, January 7th,
the press and the peoples of all countnes, to help to
create a new legal and social attitude (based on the and referred to the Codes Commrttee On January loth,
knowledge whlch has been acqulred from scientific re- Mrs F Robertson Jones, President of the American Blrtb
search In sexual blology, psychology and sociology) Control League, spoke a t Portchester a t the home of Mrs
Henry Steers, the occasion bemg a luncheon meetmg for
towards the sexual hfe of men and women "
A t present the happiness of an enormous number of the Portchester, Rye and Whlte Plains Blrth Control
men and women IS sacrificed to false sexual standards, t o Commlttee On January 15 she spoke a t Nyack and a t
the Woman's Clty Club of New York on January 1 4
Ignorance
and to intolerance
A Luncheon Conference was held a t the Woman's Clty
It is, therefore, urgently necessary that the many sexClub
on January 26th m t h representatives of endorslng
ual problems (the Posltion of Women, Marnage, Divorce,
organlzatlons
to plan the delegation to the Heanng a t
Birth Control, Eugenlcs, Fltness for Marnage, the UnAlbany
marned Mother and the I l l e g h n a t e Chdd, Prostltutlon,
Three new committees have been formed by Mrs Heck
Sexual Abnormality, Sexual Offences, Sexual Education,
Bmghamton, Tloga County, (Oego, etc ) and Elmlra
a
t
etc ) should be re-examlned from a common-sense and unThe
latter part of January was spent by Mrs Heck 1n
b~asedstandpomt and dealt with sc~entlfically
Albany where she 1s asslstlng wlth the legdatlve work and
The chlef planks of the League's platform are
work with Blrth Control Committees of Albany and
1 Pohtlcal, economic, and sexual equallty of men and vlcinlty
women
At a meetlng under the ausplces of the Cold Spnng
Harbor and Nelghborxng Towns Blrth Control Commlttee
*See B ~ T C
Xo a m o ~Rsvnw fnr July, 1928, pa@ 215
T
February, 19.99
on January 7th a t wh~chMrs Walter T ~ m m ewas chamman, a resolution was passed urglng the enactment of the
New Ye" B ~ l l
Thlrty voters s p e d the resolut~onendorsmg the bdl
In the drscuss~ontwo Episcopal m~nlstersand a physman
spoke strongly for Bwth Control l e g d a t ~ o n
I n October, 1928, Mrs L ~ l l ~ aFrancis
n
Fttch, chanman of Legrslatron of the New York C ~ t yFederat~onof
Women's Clubs sent the followmg letter to all party cand~datesfor elect~onto the New York legdature
"The New York C ~ t yFederat~onof Women's Clubs,
havmg about 200,000 members, has endorsed a legt4at1ve
bdl to p e r m ~ tp h y s ~ c ~ a ntos gwe contraceptme mformat ~ o nto married persons, and as Leg~slatweCha~rman,I
am ~nterestedIn knomng wh~chof the cand~datesfor the
New York State legtslatwe are In favor of such a b ~ l l
Would you be so kind as to md~cateon the enclosed form
whether or not you a r e In favor of such a measure "
F ~ f t yrepl~eswere rece~ved, of wh~chall but 1 0 were
emphat~callyin favor of the blll Seven held "an open
mmd" and of the three who answered No one remarked
"Except In cases where e ~ t h e rparent 1s affl~ctedmth
tuberculos~sor some other ~ncurabled~sease,or povertystncken famil~esalready havtng a number of ch~ldren"
On January 16, Mrs R ~ c h a r dBlhngs, a Director of
the Amencan B ~ r t hControl League, spoke a t Forest
Hllls, to the Queen's Branch of the New York League of
Women Voters, urgtng active work for the New York
B ~ r t hControl b ~ l l
The Federal Grand J u r y ~n Brooklyn, on complarnt
of the Post Office Department, returned an ind~ctment
a g a ~ n s tMary Ware Dennett, author of a pamphlet ent ~ t l e d"The Sex S ~ d eof Llfe " The pamphlet was first
pnnted In the Medtcnl Remew ten years ago. and
smce then has been used by the Y M C A , Y W C A ,
by theologtcal schools and been recommended by hundreds
of mm~sters,social workers and p h y s ~ c ~ a n sA new e&tron
has recently been brought out, the ~llustrat~ons
for wh~ch
were supewlsed by D r R L Dlck~nson,of the Maternal
Health Comm~ttee The pamphlet was descr~bedby the
Grand J u r y as "obscene, lewd, lasc~v~ous
and filthy, vde
and rndecent and unfit to be spread on the records of t h ~ s
honorable court "
Pennsylvania
0
NLY a brief announcement can be made t h ~ smonth
of the Comblned Conference of the Pennsvlvanra
B r t h Control Federat~onand the Southeastern Pcnnsylvanla Brrth Control League-on the mornlng, afternoon
and evenmg of February 27th The subject for drscusslon a t the mornlng sesslon 1s "Is Bwth Control Moral?"
the part~clpantsbemg the Reverend Karl Redand of S t
George's Church, New York, S Burns W~lsonof the
Soc~etyfor E t h ~ c a lCulture, the Rev Srdney E Goldstem & the Free Synagogue, New York, the R& J Arch-
bald MacCallum, a Presbytenan min~sterand the Rev
Roger S Forbes, a U n ~ t a r ~ a nAt the luncheon Mrs
Robert S Huse, Execut~veSecretary of the Amencan
B ~ r t hControl League mll speak on the success of the
Chnical Research Bureau Soc~alwelfare, health and
the bdl to be subm~ttedto the 1929 legtslature are the
subjects of the afternon sesslon T ~ t l e sof some of the
papers on soc~alwelfare are
"Should Welfare Workers Be I n Favor of B ~ r t hControl?", Hornell Hart, P h D
"Can Birth Control Lower Tax Rates?", James H S
Bossard, Ph D
"Do the Workmg Classes Need B ~ r t hControl?", Mr
Israel Mufson
"What I s the Ongm of the Opposit~onto B ~ r t hControl ?", Donald Young, Ph D
"What Shall We Read About B ~ r t hControl?", Hudson
Chapman, Ph D ,
A Lovett Dewees, M D , pres~desa t the health conference and Mr Samuel Emlen who mtroduced the B ~ r t h
Control B ~ l lIn the leg~slatureIn 1927 speaks on the
b ~ l that
l
IS proposed for 1929
Mr Emlen, D r Wm H
Garth of S t Mark's Church, Islrp, and Margaret Sanger
are peakers a t the pubhc meetmg held In the evcnmg
he conference wh~chwdl be held a t the Bellevue Stratford, Ph~ladelph~a,
1s under the chamnansh~p of Mr
Stevens Hecksher
On January 13th, D r James F Cooper spoke before
a large Mass Meetmg of the Young Democracy of Philadelph~a
ENGLAND
T
H E publ~cat~on
of the Annual Report, for 1927-28,
of the Soc~etyfor the P r o v ~ s ~ oof
n Brrth Control
Clln~csmarks another step forward In the Brrth Control
movement m Great Brltam Mr Harold Cox, Honorary
Treasurer for the Soc~ety,In a preface to the report
points out that In the d~stressedm~nlngareas the mfant
populatton 1s stdl gromng almost as rap~dlyas m tlmes
of prosperity "There 1s no vrs~bleoutlook In lrfe for these
ch~ldren," he says, "and both husband and w~fewould be
reheved of a heavy load of anx~ety~f they were taught
sound methods of avoiding unwanted concept~ons T o
do thls," he cont~nues,"IS the arm of the Soclety for the
P r o v ~ s ~ oof
n B ~ r t h Control Clmmcs, whrch now works
through twelve centres m London, the provmces and Scotland" A s~gnlficantaspect of the Soc~cty'swork IS the
development of a climc In a Mrdland mlnlng area and the
report notes bhat many mmers' mves attend the Glasgow
centre
All told, 4,514 new cases have been dealt mth durmg
the year, 1377 of them a t the Soc~ety's ploneer centre a t
Walworth, In addhon to 7,606 return v ~ s ~ (3,250
ts
at
Walworth) The Soc~etyrecerves no support from pubhc
funds and, as Mr Cox pomts out, the development of the
work depends on the contnbut~onsreceived from the chantable publ~c
Btrth Control Revreto
IRELAND
OMMITTEE stage on the Evd Literature bill, whch
was first fixed for November 26th, beans m the
middle of February I t was postponed ln order that proceedlngs mght not be mterrupted by the Christmas h o h
days There are between 70 and 80 amendments to be
considered Some of them are Intended to llberahze the
bd1, but most a m a t mnklng ~ t provmons
s
more strmgent
It 1s unllkely that there will be any modlficatlon of the
total prohib~tlonof all books and perlodlcals contalnmg
any advocacy of Blrth Control or lnformatlon concernmg
~t The Archbishops of Cashel, Armagh and D u b h and
other members of the Insh Hierarchy of the Roman
Cathol~cChurch have publicly stated that the only amendments acceptable to them would be such as would strengthen
the prohlbltlon and that any attempt to wh~ttledown the
provlslons against Blrbh Control would be opposed m the
Interest of Roman Cathollc prlnclples How powerful the
Roman Cathohc Church already 1s in regard to llterary
censorship was shown recently, when the Archbishop of
Tuam banned from the publlc llbrary of Galway the works
of a number of authors, ~ncludmgTolstol, Victor Hugo
and Bernard Shaw The National Unwerslty of Ireland
1s supportmg amendments to the bdl whmh would llberallze
Bome of ~ t features,
s
but, on Blrth Control, the spokesman
for these amendments, Deputy Tlerney, stated on Dec 3,
that "nothlng IS furbher from our intent~onthan to favor
or faclhtate elther Blrth Control propaganda or any form
of evd llterature" It 1s now expected that the bdl m11
become a law m t h httle delay
C
ITALY
N EDITORIAL In The Survey fumshes new detalls
about Itallan efforts to stmulate p o p u l a t m
Desp~tepopular Ideas of Itahan fecundty, recent d s patches from that country report a decllnlng b~rth-rate,
especially In the citles of the north In the first SIX
months of 1928, blrth In Florence hardly equalled the
deaths In number, In Bologna the balance was adverse,
whde even the smaller ches, such as Verona, Ferrara and
Cremona, show the same almost universal downward trend
A falllng blrth-rate contradicts the Fasclst philosophy of
a flounshmg state, and expedients to counteract ~t are
not lackmg A fnend of The Suroey, wrltlng from Rome,
hsts some of these Flrst, a bonus of from 200 to 400
hre ($10 60-$21 00) was offered for famlhes wlth elghteen
chddren Then the necessary number of offspring was reduced to twelve, and recently to ten The names of tamfies wnting In to clam the bonus are published m the
dally newspapers Several months ago the clty of Mdan
began offenng free passes on the tram system t o any
famdy wlth ten chddren, or seven, ~f the head of the famlly
was a government employee Rome followed suit, and a
feverlsh compet~tlonfanned by the newspapers 1s on b e
tween Wlan -and Rome to see k h x h ccltg LU
first acheve
A
the mllhon mark In populatlon Florence exempts a tam~ l yw ~ t hten chddren from paylng taxes Apparently the
burden of bonuses 1s becommg a httle heavy, for recently
Mussohnl sent an order to the prefect of communlt~esto
ask employers to contnbute to the fund as a patnotlc
duty Gifts have also been sent by the Duce t o Itaban
famlhes h n g outslde of Italy, and reduced rallroad rates
are offered t o expectant mothers to the homeland so that
then bables may be born under the Italian flag How this
effort 1s apparently abettmg nature m one Instance 1s dlsclosed m a triumphant commun~catlon,headed The J o y of
a Fasc~st,recently published In the Messagero
"I msh to announce that Saturday my wlfe gave blrth
to three ch~ldren Trlplets used to be a rare occurrence,
but slnce the exhortation of our glonous Duce they now
commence to be frequent
"My case, however, or rather that of my wlfe, 1s alto(Continued on pugs
m)
ANNUAL MEETING
(Continued from page 61)
Blrth Control League wdl not be ended untd Blrth Control advlce 1s mthm reach of every mother In Amerlck
The reports of progress were followed by two ~nterestIng addresses The first was 'wen by Mrs Cora B Hodson, Secretary of the Bntlsh Eugenlcs Soclety and also of
the International Eugemcs Society Mrs Hodson gave
a bnef hlstory of the Blrth Control movement In Enqland
Her greatest stress was on the dlfferentlal blrth-rate and
the fact that people of lnfenor lntelhgence are multiplyIng out of proportion t o those of hlgher mental ablhty
She descnbed Blrth Control as a tremendously powerful
tool, that mlght be used d ~ s a s t r o u s l ~but
, that, brought
mthm the reach of the fam~lieswhere it 1s most needed,
may be used to burld a better and hlgher humamty
Professor Wllham Pepperell Montague, who has recently returned from a tour of the world, gave the final
d
of the crowded mlsery of
address H e told m v ~ n words
great parts of the Eastern world, especially Japan, Korea
and Manchuna, mlsery due to the reckless brmgng Into
existence of chlldren for whom there was no room, no food
and no opportunltles In hfe Attempts that have been made
by Western organlzat~onsto relleve the famlnes and the
mlsery were as futlle as attempts to fill a sleve wlth water
The only hope hes In Blrth Control, and In the education
of leaders and governments to see the necessity for controlhng populatlon Even worse than thls unthlnklng multlpllcatlon of the East was the case of Italy where dehberate attempts are bemg made to Increase the populatlon untll Italy shall be so full that she must engage m
aggressive warfare to find space for her people "The
ughest cause of war", sald Professor &lontague, 1s the
purely animal-llke pressure of numbers, faced by the alternatme of starvation or of robbing others What an
ugly and hornble prospect for the world t o face' Populatlon crowded to the lmnt and -people
- hterally forced to
feed upon each other *'
Havelock Ellis
His Service to Humanity
I
N H I S lnterestmg mtroductlon to Mrs Margaret Sanger's adrmrable book on "The New
Motherhood", Mr Havelock EUls justly observes
"that ~tls not the few who rule the world I t IS the
masses-the ~gnorant,emotional, volatde, supersthous masses-who rule the world" However,
he finds a great consolation, that there are mdlvlduals "who are workmg for the mcrease of knowledge, and of practical actlon based on knowledge
among the masses, the masses who alone possess the
powep to change the force of the world for good or
for evd, and by growth m wisdom to raise the
human race on to a hlgher level"
How very true IS thls mth regard to the mdefatigable actmty of Mr Havelock Elh hunself
Has not his own hfe been devoted to the great cause
of the betterment of the mdmdual and to the ralsmg
of the human race on to a hlgher level? I am sure
there are m every part of the world, m every nation,
persons who have b e d h s knowledge of the
human soul, ~ t mstmcts,
s
emotions, its posslblllties
of lntellectual greatness and more refinement H e
has f e d m x l thew lmagmatlon, he has strengthened
thew d p o w e r to soclal actlvlty and mtellectual
asplratlons It ls the mvaluahle pnvllege of such
farseemg Cltrzens of Manlund to lead the ignorant
masses, to show the path to true progress
There ls m the mde field and scope of the rem c h and the teachmg of Mr Havelock Elh a
spec& part whlch has the mdest practical bearmg on the mtellectual moral and physical betterment of the masses the raaal improvement of the
mdmdual and, by these means, of the race Itself
The hlstory of man 1s full of wars and of every
other lund of destruction of human hfe That has
been the glowe of only too many rulers and ststesmen, to them the human hfe Itself has been a very
Infenor matter, not even worthy of modest sttenhon It is only now, after thousands of years of
h t o r y , that a cornparatlvely few people have realmd the paramount unportance of a methodlcal
unprovement of the human race However, after
a few generat~onswe can be sure that thls 1s gomg
to be the greatest duty of %very enhghtened Government and the central problem of ev5ry teachmg
of nght cltlzenshp
Those future tunes d know far better than our
own hme what they, m t h s respect, wdl owe to Mr
Havelock E b
BIRTH CONTROL
EVERY ASPECT
INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS
PROBLEMS OF OVERPOPULATION
MEDICAL AND EUGENIC ASPECTS
RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL ASPECTS
These four volumes of the Proceedlugs of the Suth
Internatloual Neo Malthus~anand Bnth
Control Conference for
$5 00 (smgle volumes $2 00)
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BIRTH CONTROL REVIEW
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THE CRISIS
A Record of the Darker Races
The
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Havelock Ellis
T o Control them environment
Women must b e protected by the law
equally w t h men
A Guide to the Perplexed
T
0 C H A R A C T E R I Z E 1s In a way to l ~ m ~ t ,
and Havelock E l l ~ s1s almost unllm~tedIn his
range of Interests But we may say that the two
poles of h ~ world
s
are the fact that he 1s a phvbman
and the fact that he IS a ph~losopher
As a physlc~anhe has spoken through h ~ "Stud~es
s
~nthe Psychology of Sex" not only to that hnuted
pubhc to whom alone our laws allow the books to
be offic~allyaddressed4octors, lawyers and mmlsters-but to thousands of people to whom the problems of sex have been acute personal problems,
brought somet~mesto obsess~on,because there was
so l ~ t t l el ~ g h to
t be found on them, and because the
very people who ml ht be expected to shed hght on
them were taboo-r~ den and had never heard of or
heeded Blshop Wdson's warnlng to all adv~sorsto
be sure that thew hght was not darkness
And as a ph~losopher,Havelock E l l ~ s1s also a
guide t o the perplexed And here h ~ work
s
1s perhaps eten more ~mportant F o r Nature and good
luck solve most people's sex problems for them
But how 1s one to solve the large problem of one's
presence In a world not cut t o one's own pattern,
not sol~c~tous
of one's ex~stence' The answers have
m blank
ranged all the way from bhnd o p t ~ m ~ sto
despan Havelock Elhs has read all those answers
and sympath~zedw ~ t hall that is genume m each of
them F o r that class of person-and we have no
means of knowmg how large ~tIS, for people are
even more ret~centabout them phdosoph~cdoubts
than they are about thew sex problems-for that
class of person who IS hurt by the ~ m p a c tof existence I can magme no better source of splrltual
consolation than Havelock E l l ~ s '"The Dance of
L ~ f "e H e does not cater to the weakness that may
often be a t the root of the 1nab111tyto accept life,
but he gwes these hes~tatmgsouls such a perspectwe that when hc tells them that "There 1s no separatlng P a m and Pleasure w~thoutmakmg the first
meanmgless for all v ~ t a ends
l
and the second turn
to ashes"-they are able to accept the saymg
%
I
I
I
I
ITALY
(Conknued from page 60)
gether wonderful When you think t h a t a f t e r eight sons
born one a t a t ~ m e now
,
they bee n t o come three a t a t ~ m e '
M y only grief is t h a t the newborn are all
and will
not be able t o bear arms for their Great Country H a v ~ n g
six sons hving, the t r ~ p l e t shave ~ncreasedthe slze of our
f a m ~ l yIn one stroke 60 per cent And cont~nuingin t h ~ s
fash~on,my w~fe,who is only th~rty-three,m11 eventually
be able t o form a n entire company 1 Long hve Italy, long
hve the Duce, long h e the F a m ~ l y1"
Do You Know
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WHAT FOUR MEN, leaders in four different fields of act~vity,think of the
BIRTH CONTROL REVIEW
A hfINISTER, Reverend John Haynes Holmea, Mlnister of the Communrty Church. N Y C
"This paper is an organ worthy of the great cause to which ~t is dedicated The
REVIEW publishes much valuable mformation and 1s edlted wlth courage, vlsion
and true i d e a l ~ m"
A DOCTOR, Dr Robert L D~dunron,Secretary of the Co-ttee
on Maternal Health, N Y C
"Anyone seriously mterested in blrth rates and m control of population must needs
watch your columns, while the non mformed wlll be attracted by the appearance,
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