eighty as one-dollar houses, six as two-dollar houses, and thirty-four as five-and ten-dollar houses. Yet the chances are great that essentially persons with serious interests in social hygiene turn to such books of sober study. But to cry out such information to those Broadway crowds which seek a few hours' fun before they go to the next lobster palace or to the nearest cabaret cannot possibly serve social hygiene. Worst of all, the theatre, more than any other source of so-called information, has been responsible for the breakdown of the barriers of social reserve in sexual discussions, and that means ultimately in erotic behaviour. The book which the individual man or woman reads at his fireside has no socializing influence, but the play which they see together is naturally discussed, views are exchanged, and all which in old-fashioned times was avoided, even in serious discussion, becomes daily more a matter of the most superficial gossip. When recently at a dinner party a charming young woman whom I had hardly met before asked me, when we were at the oysters, how prostitution is regulated in Germany, and did not conclude the subject before we had reached the ice cream, I saw the natural consequences of this new era of theatre influence. Society, which with the excuse of philanthropic sociology favours erotically tainted problems, must sink down to a community in which the sexual relations become chaotic and turbulent. Finally, the theatre is not open only to the adult. Its filthy message reaches the ears of boys and girls, who, even if they take it solemnly, are forced to think of these facts and to set the whole mechanism of sexual associations and complex reactions into motion. The playwriters know that well, but they have their own theory. When I once remonstrated against the indecencies which are injected into the imagination of the adolescent by the plays, Mr. Bayard Veiller, the talented author of “The Fight,” answered in a Sunday newspaper. He said that he could not help thinking of the insane man who objected to throwing a bucket of salt water into the ocean for fear it would turn the ocean salt. “Does not Professor Münsterberg know that you can't put more sex thoughts into the minds of young men and women, because their minds contain nothing else?” If the present movement is not brought to a stop, the time may indeed come when those young minds will not contain anything else. But is that really true of to-day, and, above all, was it true of yesterday, before the curtain was raised on the red-light drama? VI