so. There are always good reasons for caution, always little adjustments to be made, an agreement around the corner, public opinion is always swinging our way, whether towards sexual equality or saner treatment of the insane, only . . . . Only, somehow, these adjustments, agreements, switches of opinion never come off as a result of caution. The Victorians, whom we are wont to despise, did not wait upon public opinion (this is admittedly a generalization and many contrary instances can be cited without disproving the case) but pushed on with Factory Acts, Education Acts and made or damned public opinion. If ever reforms were accomplished by a determined minority it was then. To quote the Victorians' favorite authority "the Kingdom of Heaven now suffereth violence." Only violent assault on ignorance or fear will overthrow any tyranny of the mind, and the only possible weapon is truth, not a selection of the truth, but all aspects of it and all ways of seeing it. I know you can ask me where my courage is, since this appears over assumed initials. I can only plead that I look for the overthrow of ignorance in many other fields than those Venerian, and that public avowal would not advance any of those ends, which I count valuable, one whit. This is perhaps also a question of expediency which may be debated at length-elsewhere, since it is not germane to the matters here raised.

Is the argument of expediency valid? There is a suggestion that the picture to be presented should in some way be controlled, so that a kinder. more romantic idea of the homosexual can be fostered. It may, incidentally, be asked at this point, who is to have the ordering of this picture? Can those who propose such a thing really think that discerning people, who are well aware of the difficulties and sadnesses of the socially blessed hetero-

sexual state, will be taken in by such sweetness and light. Those whose opinions it is worth cultivating are hardly likely to fall for that line, and those who are less discerning, or more gullible, are in for one big awakening when they find out the reality. For myself, it was necessary for me to acknowledge kinship with the old, sad men shuffling around the public toilets in the dark as well as with the lithe young boy of dreamland, to understand the love of pain even if that was not my way, to accept, in short, that the world of the homosexual is as varied and as terrible as the straight world, even more so because it must be covered and disguised. This is the truth that must be presented and if possible a sense of kinship aroused. To offer advice from Gide's L'immoraliste may seem to be compounding folly, but a famous paragraph may serve as a guide towards truth:

On est sur de ne jamais faire que ce que l'on est incapable de comprendre. Comprendre, c'est se sentir capable de faire. Assumer le plus possible d'humanite, voila la bonne formule.

(You are sure of never doing only what you are incapable of understanding. To understand, is to feel yourself capable of doing. To take on as much as possible of humanity, there's a good rule.) In this century we have plunged deeper than ever before into the meaning of human existence and have become aware of darknesses and horrors within. Words have begun to seem unable to bear the weight of description and explanation. The sciences and arts spew forth neologisms daily and the language of the writer has absorbed this and more besides. In seeking to explain human motives psychologists and others have often found that by examining what is exaggerated and distorted a truer insight may be gained into root causes. With-

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