A less obvious influence was also at work. The “flaming youth” of the Twenties, product of war and of general rebellion against Victorian inhibitions, had reached a point of disillusionment with sexual freedom, and now, as the “lost generation”, were groping toward emotional stability. This quest for adjustment called forth a quantity of popular psychology and sociology, stemming largely from Freud, which deprecated irregular attachments, especially the homosexual, and exalted marriage and family life. Thus, some decline in variant fiction was evident before the end of the Thirties. Then, in 1939 the second World War exerted initial pressure in the same direction, for, as always, the younger generation’s urge to perpetuate itself before too late threw added emphasis upon heterosexual relations and parenthood. And finally, in the publishing business, to usual wartime handicaps was added the new military requisition of cellulose for explosives, which resulted in an unprecedented shortage of paper and stringent selectivity in published fiction. Altogether it was inevitable that during the early Forties the variant literary stream should run low. It did not, however, cease entirely, and since the end of World War II, trends in fiction suggest that variance is on its way to becoming a recognized if not accepted segment of human experience. The probable underlying reasons for this change are varied. One is the usual aftermath of war. Besides regularly producing a bumper crop of infants, war has, since the days of Sappho, swelled the number of variants by segregating the young to some extent during just those years when sexual interest is at its height. More conscious effort was made to combat this tendency during World War II than ever before, both in the armed forces and on the home front. Preventive measures this time were as much educational as disciplinary, so that the war generation emerged with some grounding in “psychiatry at the fox-hole level.” One result is that among women there was no such deliberate post-war affectation of masculinity as occurred in the Twenties. Another is that many incipient authors were prepared to write of variance with some balance and perspective.