Any. 26. iv our xeaders will bear with us, we should like to say one or two more words on this subject, prompted by Dr. Margaret Polk's letter in yesterday's issue, a letter which should surely take a high place among such correspondence for its equally deep feeling and admirable restraint. Dr. Rawlinson's letter to-day we must leave as if stands. It is difficult to think that he was quite master of himself when he wrote it and, in a calmer mood, he might be reminded. that thumping the table never improved a bad case and usually spoils a good one.
And the Moral Welfare League have a splendid case, if only they could be induced to handle it differently. No one but an avowed cynic can fail to sympathize with the principle for which they stand or to desire the things that they desire: that men shall decent lives, that women shall be protected and the next generation grow up without taint. But we say that op the lines on which they are working the Teague have failed and there is not a shadow of a sign that they will succeed. Even in the very lowest of their aims, that of driving vice underground, they have not succeeded in making it in any way less obvious and accessible than it was. They have certainly not reduced the danger of contagion. even if they have not actually increased it, inasmuch as a licensed house (without any question of external inspection, which we are not advocate ing) will in its own interest do its best to keep clear of disease and has better means of doing so than have isolated girls. And in the highest of their ambitions, in the war on the white slave traffic, we have Dr. Polk's sad admission that ''the system so successfully hides behind these girls that every blow aimed at the system first strikes the girls.'"
Yet in other lands something has been done to strike at that system. Legislation was passed in England some eight or ten years ago to inflict the cat'? on men convicted of living on the earings of unfortunates, and although it is certainly difficult to chitin such convictions the Act had a remarkably healthy effect. The work, worthy of all praise, the Chinese Anti-Kidnapping Society are doing and the promptitude of Chinese officials to inflict the severest penalties on kidnappers when caught stiggests that something is to be done in this direction: and certainly no foreign Consul would hang back. Similarly the mistresses of '"'red light'? houses are a legitimate object of attack, with a long term of imprisonment as the reward, whether they are in business for themselves or as the agents of an unknown proprietor. It might also be possible to proceed against landlords, who let houses at enormous rents for purposes of which they cannot be ignorant. Finally, we spoke last Satwday of the need of rescue work on a liberal scale. Not for a moment would we underrate the noble efforts of those engaged in this work. Yet we believe that they would be the first to admit that it is not the success it should be.
We tread on delicate ground. But perhaps the chief reason is that the environment of rescue homes is intolerably dull. A girl snatched from the streets is. very much in the position of a convalescent from a severe illness, who needs dainty food and -continual humour ing. Above all, the rescue home and its inmates are ticketed as such for all the world. It is one thing to inspire a girl with the desire to lead a new life, but quite another to #e-cure for her the means of doing so Perhaps some system of international correspondence might the founded, by which such girls could be given a new start in a new land. And therewith the welfare leagues of all Jands might do something to educate the people who pride themselves on their respectability into a new conception of the word charity. We are often told that the present age is more broadminded than any of its forebears. Tt has the best of all opportunities to prove that it is, in its treatment of the victims vf life.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.