Much controversy has revolved round the question of the desirability of self-control as a means of regulating births, and of its universal practicability. It is here contended that where possible this is immeasurably the best means of regulating births. At the same time, it is futile to advance a counsel of such perfection and difficulty that a highly probable failure to observe it will be followed by socially disastrous results. Everyone would acknowledge that the Medical Officer of a military unit who refused to instruct the soldiers under his supervision in the precautions they should take against contracting venereal disease, on the high moral grounds that they should never expose themselves to such risk, would be carrying his idealism to socially harmful lengths. Yet it is a much more difficult task for two people in love with each other and living together in the intimacies of married life to exercise continuous self-denial over long periods extending to years, than it is for the soldier to abstain from occasional promiscuity. In both cases it is clear that the correct course is to start by putting the case for restraint as clearly and forcibly as possible, and then to explain what steps must be taken in the event of that restraint proving too great a task. In the Army and Navy such appeals, when tactfully made, have met with a response which justifies the view that, within limits, more can be done in this way than might be supposed. As a general rule, then, it would appear desirable that contraceptives should be used as little as possible, especially in the early years of married life. It also seems to the writer that in the case of normal married people, too much has been made of the demoralizing effect of the ‘excessiveness’ of that indulgence which is supposed to be permitted by the practice of contraception and which forms the basis of the ‘moral’ objection advanced in this country. This argument frequently emanates from ecclesiastical sources, where knowledge of the sexual aspect of human nature as well as of the technical side of contraception is apt to be restricted and biassed. In effect, the man who is sufficiently provident and considerate of his wife to encourage the necessary precautions (which――a point too often ignored by prejudiced critics――from the immediately selfish point of view both parties would far sooner forego), is not the kind of man to indulge in reprehensible excesses. Actually, demoralization seems rather to be produced in those men who insist on gratifying themselves regardless of their means, or of the welfare of the children they so abundantly procreate, or of the feelings and health of their wives.