BY BERNARD SHAW

IN a volume of plays by Brieux recently published, Mr.
Bernard Shaw writes as follows of "Damaged Goods"
(Les Avariés):

In this play Brieux took for his theme the diseases that
are supposed to be the punishment of profligate men and
women. It was a difficult and even dangerous enterprise,
because it brought him up against that curious tribal sur-
vival, the Taboo. Taboo is not morality, not decency, not
reason, justice, or anything agreeable; it is a traditionally
inculcated convention that certain things must not be men-
tioned, with the inevitable result that under this strange
protection of silence, they fall into hideous corruption and
abuse, and go from bad to worse whilst those who know
what is happening must look on, tonguetied, at the inno-
cents playing unwarned on the edge of a hidden precipice,
and being sacrificed to the Taboo in appalling numbers every
day. Now the diseases dealt with in "Damaged Goods"
are doubly taboo, because the sacrifices are ignorantly sup-
posed to be the salutary penalties of misconduct. Not only
must not the improper thing be mentioned, but the evil
must not be remedied, because it is a just retribution and
a wholesome deterrent. The last point may be dismissed
by simply inquiring how a disease can possibly act as a
deterrent when people are kept in ignorance of its exist-
ence. But the punishment theory is a hideous mistake.
It might as well be contended that fires should not be
put out because they are the just punishment of the in-

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