_Prostitution in Europe._ Abraham Flexner, New York, The Century Co., 1914. Publication of the Bureau of Social Hygiene. Pp. 455. A splendid contribution to the subject, especially useful to American penologists and criminologists, who have been obliged to put up with sporadic and often inaccurate reports of this very important and social evil in Continental countries. Mr. Flexner promises a study shortly of prostitution in the United States. Let us hope that it will meet the high standard of the work under discussion. It is almost trite to say that no library of a social worker should be without this book. Mr. Flexner’s treatment is dispassionate, careful, thorough, and broad. He has persistently gone after the facts. The book is commendably free from propaganda. He defines prostitution, discusses the demand and supply, and after showing the relation of prostitution to law and law enforcement gives several chapters to the discussion of regulation, after which he treats with equal detail the method of treatment commonly called “abolition”. The last chapter, summing up the outcome of European experience, is for Americans cognizant of the many surveys of the social evil in American cities, of especial interest and importance. “Prostitution is a modifiable phenomenon, arising out of the complicated interaction of personal factors and social conditions. The attempt to stamp it out completely by summary, even though persistent action, cannot be hopefully regarded. Repression requires an abundance of institutional facilities such as nowhere exists. Although important good is achieved at the moment (by repression) and still more in the long run, prostitution as a formidable problem will still remain. Repression is what the physicians call symptomatic treatment.”