The chances of its being mine are reduced to the minimum--_because my boy will know_. The revelation, as I make it, is so simple and yet so complete, that it could be accomplished with equal ease by mother or father. When he is about sixteen I place in his hand a book that tells him all, and I say to him: “My boy, when you are alone, read this.[1] There are truths in it which you should know.” From that hour the “great social peril” must fight my son in the open. He knows all that science can teach--all that parents can tell. [1] There are several good books designed for this purpose. “Confidential Chats with Boys,” and “Plain Facts on Sex Hygiene,” are two in a series on this subject by Wm. Lee Howard, M.D., and published by E. J. Clode, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York. I am going to say now what I should have said at the outset--that the father, though he may leave every other phase of the boy’s development to the mother, should take the initiative in sex enlightenment. He should regard it as his peculiar right, his sacred privilege, to point out the devious paths through which he himself may have threaded his way from youth to man’s estate. There are no barriers between me and my boy. The oneness of affection and the sameness of sex easily compass the disparity in years. He grows older but I do not, for I am waiting for him. In fact I am going back to him--I am meeting him halfway. Our play is as boy with boy. Our talks are as man to man. In a relationship like this there are no “sex secrets.” There is no ice to break, because the transmission of knowledge is consistent, gradual and unconscious. But when the father fails in his duty and the mother has to step into the breach, it is different, I concede. There is a certain reserve which is womanly, and perhaps not unmotherly. Still, mother’s love is a poor thing if it cannot break down that slender wall to save the boy. And mother’s love is not a poor thing, but a great power. So if mothers can only be made to see why it must be done, and when and how, I believe they will do it. This is an appeal not to parental love only, but to parental reason. It is made not by a purist, but by one who has travelled the road by which all boys must go, and who knows its every crook and turn. It is a plea in behalf of the American boy, who asks only that he be given a torch to light his way. VII THE WEED AND THE WINECUP In the past fiscal year there were smoked in the United States nearly two million cigarettes more than in any previous year of the nation’s history; and the consumption of distilled spirits, exclusive of wines and beers, broke the record of the preceding year by twenty-three million gallons.