Love – Marriage – Birth Control: Being a speech delivered at the Church Congress at Birmingham, October 1921. By Lord Dawson of Penn. (Nisbet & Co. London. Pp. 27. Price 1s.)

It is notoriously difficult to elicit any unbiassed information on the subject of sex from physicians of high repute. One can, for instance, conclude with fair precision that if asked any question concerning the relation of abstinence to health, they will answer that the correlation between the two is a positive one, i.e. that the more complete the abstinence the more perfect the state of health, and that there is no connection between enforced abstinence and any form of nervous disorder; it is answer which would surprise one were it given as regards the functioning of any other of the bodily or mental systems. In this brochure Lord Dawson courageously lifts at least a corner of the veil. He admits that at all events during marriage such abstention may be 'harmful to health and happiness' and that it may 'impose a strain hostile to health and happiness'. He further challenges the recent pronouncement of the Church as set forth at the Lambeth Conference and maintains, in opposition to this, that 'Sex love has, apart from parenthood, a purport of its own. It is something to prize and to cherish for its own sake. It is an essential part of health and happiness in marriage'.