State supervision and organization of prostitution does not exist in the German empire as it does in France; prostitution is merely tolerated. Disorderly houses are prohibited by law and procurers may be severely punished. But notwithstanding these laws in many German cities, among others in Mayence, Magdeburg, Altona, Kiel, Nuremberg, Worms, Freiburg, Leipsic, Regensburg, Hamburg, Augsburg, Wuerzburg, disorderly houses exist that are tolerated by the police.[90] This seems an incredible state of affairs and its contradiction to the laws must be well known to our government officials. According to German law, persons renting an apartment to a prostitute are subject to punishment. On the other hand, the police are obliged to tolerate thousands of prostitutes and to protect them in their trade if they submit to the prescribed rules, for instance, to regular examination by a physician. But if the state makes concessions to prostitutes and supports them in the plying of their trade, it is necessary for them to have a residence also; in fact, it becomes necessary to public health and order that their trade should be carried on in definite quarters. What contradictions! On the one hand the state officially recognizes prostitution; on the other hand it persecutes and punishes prostitutes and procurers. Moreover, this attitude of the state confirms, that to modern society, prostitution is a sphynx whose riddle it cannot solve. Religion and morality condemn prostitution, the laws punish it, and yet the state tolerates and protects it. In other words, our society that prides itself on its morality, its piety, its civilization and culture must suffer itself to be polluted by the slow poison of immorality and corruption. Still another conclusion follows from these conditions: ~the Christian state admits that marriage is insufficient and that the man is justified in seeking illegitimate satisfaction of the sexual impulse~. The woman is taken into consideration by this same state only, inasmuch as she yields to the illegitimate satisfaction of male lust, that is, becomes a prostitute. The police supervision and control of enlisted prostitutes does not include the men who mingle with the prostitutes, which ought to be a matter of course if the medical surveillance were to be partly effective at least, quite disregarding the fact that justice demands that the law should be equally applied to both sexes.