+Backwardness of the United States in the Movement.+--It will be apparent, from the foregoing review of the world movement against syphilis, and the essentials of a public policy toward the disease, that the majority of our efforts in this direction have been decidedly indirect. We have no national program of which we as a people are conscious. It is all we can do to arouse a sentiment to the effect that something ought to be done. In these critical times we must mobilize for action in this direction with as much speed at least as we show in developing an army and navy, slow though we are in that. To limit our efforts to the passing of freak state legislation regulating the price of a Wassermann to determine the fitness of a person for marriage, when both Wassermann test itself, and Wassermann test as evidence of fitness for marriage, are likely, under the conditions, to be absolutely worthless, is to play penny eugenics. The move to take the gag from the mouth of the physician when an irresponsible with a venereal disease aims to spread his infection by marriage is at least intelligent, preventive, even if indirect, legislation, because it acts before and not after the event. Although at the present time we cannot boast a single example of a complete program of direct legislation, the example of Michigan, which is providing free hospital treatment for adults and children with syphilis, should be watched as the first radical step in the right direction. If war and our mobilization for defense leave us with every hospital and dispensary and public health resource and all the expert judgment we have available within our borders enlisted finally in a great campaign against gonorrhea and syphilis, it will have accomplished a miracle, though it will have done no more than war has done for Europe. If it leaves us even with our more progressive states committed to an expanding program of universal efficient and accessible diagnosis and treatment, it will have conferred a blessing.