The Congressional Library has received from England and has loaned to readers the volume entitled —— by Dr. ——, published —— London. It is the previously mentioned manual for the medical and legal professions and is considered one of the best and most comprehensive works on the subject in the world. To pass the book through the customs, to transport it to Washington, to list it in the Library catalogue and to lend it to readers are all criminal acts under the law. This same volume has been borrowed by several members of the Judiciary Committee,—again a criminal act. But not a single government employee has been apprehended for these “crimes,” although the offenses were clean cut infringements of the law. Dutiful and full enforcement would mean the jailing for a five-year term of a score or so of the government employees who are involved. A still more significant fact is that members of Congress who have vehemently opposed the Cummins-Vaile Bill (to remove the words “preventing conception” from the obscenity laws) have actually had the presumption to ask the writer of this book (while working for that measure) to get for them copies of “some of this forbidden literature.” One of them added, “I’ll see that you are not prosecuted.” An instantaneous refusal brought a rather shame-faced expression to his countenance. He was a member of the Judiciary Committee, to which the bill had been referred. It would be interesting to know whether this member, who has flatly said he would vote against the bill, would be willing to confess before the Committee that he was quite willing to break the law, but unwilling to change it, and equally unwilling to insist on its enforcement. Enforcement is all too evidently a farce, and will never be anything else so long as the present laws are retained. A legal house-cleaning seems the only hope for putting the country on either a self-respecting or a democratic basis, so far as this subject is concerned. An editorial in the Washington Post has said what needs to be said on how to have laws respected: “_The enforcement of all law is necessary to the existence of the States and the United States. The alternative is anarchy. But all law must be constitutional, in accordance with the people’s expressed will. The first duty of all citizens and of Congress is to ascertain the will of the people. The second is to enforce and obey it._” PART TWO WHAT CHANGES IN THE LAW HAVE BEEN PROPOSED? CHAPTER I THE TWO FIRST FEDERAL EFFORTS _The big repeal petition of 1876 started by National Liberal League: Comstock’s obscenity exhibit wins again: Sanger arrests crystallize growing movement for repeal of law: National Birth Control League founded March, 1915, first organization of the sort in the United States: Repeal bills drafted: Petitions circulated: Noted English sympathizers help._