CO129-472 - Others - 1921 — Page 415

أبو هم انهم سليم

IIA

NOTES & COMMENTS.

The Mistake of Silence.

The other day we had some remarks to offer in relation to the policy of hush" that is being adopted regarding the tour of delegates from the National Society for Combating Venereal Diseases, and the course of the campaign gives further cause for surprise. Here is a movement designed to raise the standard of public morality, and the delegates lay special emphasis upon the urgener of coping with the evil in Do half-hearted manner, as much of the ill consequences in the past have been due to not facing the problem squarely in the face. Indeed, the particular objict of the Royal Commission which sat in England was to direct public. attention to the question. Ex- tensive official advertisements have been appearing in the Home Press cautioning both sexes against the dangers of immorality, and giving advice as to the urgency of prompt treat- ment where disease has been contracted. In the Colony, too, the lectures have been largely advertised. There may have been logic in the vote placedi upon the Press at Tuesday's meeting, which was intended for teachers (though there was nothing in the address unsuited to publication), but it is less easy to understand why it should have been deemed injudicious countenance the Prese at Thurs- iday's public lecture. Knowledge

to

Fof the suffering wrought among the innocent as well as the guilty, as outlined by Dr. Hallam, just the kind of thing to exercise a deterring influence.

If the attitude adopted be due to apprehension of creating a bad impression upon the Chinese, the alarm has small ground. The English-reading Chinese could see the nature of the lectures from the advertisements, and there was nothing in the lectures to suggest that the evil was more prevalent among the British than among others. On the contrary, & complete account of Dr. Hallam's address, which WAS based upon wide research, would probably have obviated any such idea. It Was evidently not at the wish of the delegates that this policy of semi-silence was pursued, for Dr. Hallam alluded to the service performed by the Press in opening its columns to to ventilation of the ill. In brief, the no-publicity attitude is liable, if not to defeat, at least to retard the very object in view.

412

The Hong Kong Telegraph, January

8m 1921.