for marriage, are likely, under the conditions, to be absolutely worthless, is to play penny eugenics.  The move to take the gag from the mouth of the physician when an irresponsible with a venereal disease aims to spread his infection by marriage is at least intelligent, preventive, even if indirect, legislation, because it acts before and not after the event.  Although at the present time we cannot boast a single example of a complete program of direct legislation, the example of Michigan, which is providing free hospital treatment for adults and children with syphilis, should be watched as the first radical step in the right direction.  If war and our mobilization for defense leave us with every hospital and dispensary and public health resource and all the expert judgment we have available within our borders enlisted finally in a great campaign against gonorrhea and syphilis, it will have accomplished a miracle, though it will have done no more than war has done for Europe.  If it leaves us even with our more progressive states committed to an expanding program of universal efficient and accessible diagnosis and treatment, it will have conferred a blessing.

+Relation of War to the Spread of Venereal Disease.+—­The frequent reference to the relation of war to the problems of sexual disease seems to justify a concluding paragraph on this aspect of the matter.  Much of the impetus which has carried European nations so far along the road toward an organized attack on syphilis and gonorrhea, as has been said, is undoubtedly due to the realization that war in the past has been the ally of these diseases, and that a campaign against them is as essential to national self-defense as the organization of a vast army.  Conflicting reports are coming from various sources as to the prevalence of syphilis and gonorrhea among European troops, although hopeful indications seem to be that troops in the field may have even a lower rate of disability than in peace times (British figures).  The most serious risks are encountered in troops withdrawn from the front or sent home on leave, often demoralized by the strain of the trenches.  The steady rise in the amount of syphilis in a civil population during war is evidenced, for example, by the figures of Gaucher’s clinic in Paris, in which, just before the war, 10 per cent of patients were syphilitic; after the first sixteen months of the war 16.6 per cent were syphilitic, and in the last eight months, up to December, 1916, 25 per cent had the disease.  There can be no doubt that a campaign of publicity can do much to control the wholesale spread of infection under war conditions, and we should bend our efforts to it, and to the more substantial work of providing for treatment and the prevention of infectiousness, with as much energy as we devote to the other tasks which preparedness has forced upon us.  The rigorous provisions proposed for continental armies should be carefully studied, and in no cases