I am glad to find a general repugnance among decent
people to the sale of contraceptives from automatic machines—a subject brought into the limelight by the recent publication of portions of a letter from the Ministry of Supply giving reasons for encouraging the export of these machines to dollar countries. Two separate questions arise here—the installation of such machines out- side chemists' shops and elsewhere in England, and the official encouragement of their sale and export. As to the first, there is no question of objecting to birth-control as such—I certainly have no kind of objection to it—but of giving boys in the adolescent phase the opportunity, almost the encouragement, to buy from these machines, often after dark, appliances which they would never ask for across a chemist's counter, and which, having obtained them, they would naturally want to use. Now such sale, I believe, is at present In no way illegal. The Home Secretary has no power to stop it, and there can be no question of legislation at this moment. Municipalities can do something through bye-laws, but not much. As to the Ministry of Supply, their contention is that they arc con- cerned only with the supply of steel for automatic machines, and a packet containing contraceptives can as well be sold in any such machine as a packet containing matches or cigarettes. They are anxious to see the machines exported, but claim that the question of what may be sold in them is quite outside their province. One of these machines which I have observed in a London street is let into the wall (projections from a wall can in most boroughs be stopped by bye-laws), bears the slimily hypocritical legend " Sold for the prcret • tion of disease [sic] only " and the name of Keystone Ltd., and is obviously manufactured for the sale of contraceptives and nothing else.
Half-a-crown in a slot brings you three. * * * *
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