A FOREWORD
This story by Mr. Oppenheim comes, perhaps, at the psychological moment to tell—let me hope to thousands—in the form of fiction what we must very soon face as an actual living question to be squarely met and dealt with. For the old saying that “the truth is stranger than fiction” is peculiarly true of this story. The fearful truth that lies back of this narrative cannot much longer remain in the background of the public conscience. We are slowly but surely awakening, in part, to a realizing sense that somewhere in the social body there is a festering sore that needs the surgery and cleansing process of the light of public discussion and extermination at the hands of decent people. It is not meeting the question to contend that it is not a “nice subject” or a “polite topic”: neither did the ravages of tuberculosis make pleasant reading. And the evil of “The Great White Plague” is comparatively as naught with the greater and more insidious evil that is being wrought by “The Great Black Plague,” with its fearful results on innocent children. Mr. Oppenheim, with due reserve, gives a glimpse, and it is but a glimpse, of the burden we are laying upon the next generation by blinding not alone our own eyes to the death-dealing evil that lies at our very door, but the actual and pitiable blinding of the unborn and the newly-born.
It may be that the work of arousing the public conscience on the great evils that threaten the very foundations of our social structure, is in the hands of the fictionist. This has unquestionably been true in the past. If it be true of the present evil, may this story speak its great and vibrant message in clarion tones.
Edward Bok.
Philadelphia,
1910.