A RACIAL DANGER [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In
answer to Miss Mary Dendy I would point out that sterilization is meant to be an " irretrievable proceeding " undertaken after the case has been fully investigated by a competent authority acting in conjunction with the regular doctor in attendance, waiting until puberty is established to eliminate possible errors of diagnosis and thus preventing the " grave injustice " which she suggests.
Segregation of all mental deficients is utterly impossible owing to their numbers apart from any other consideration. Miss Dendy obviously has only in mind a relatively few when she writes of the crowds in our prisons and workhouses and overlooks the multitudes who up to the present have not committed any anti-social act which has brought them into contact with constituted authority, but who go on reproducing their species to populate our prisons, workhouses, segregation colonies and mental hospitals or swell the ranks of une:n- ployables in due course.
The segregated are never happy, they arc always thinking and dreaming of freedom, and if whilst under segregation they hav6 been taught some occupation of economic value, their friends quickly recognize the fact and in the bulk of instances bring every conceivable form of pressure to bear to obtain their freedom. The segregated would clamour en masse for steri- lization if it opened the door to freedom.—I am, Sir; &c.,
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