BLIGH OR BLIGHT?

NZ Truth, Issue 150, 2 May 1908, Page 5

BLIGH OR BLIGHT?

THE WHITE CROSS CRUSADER'S CRUDITIES.

His Putrid Piffle and Suggestive Smut.

A Humbug Who Ought t« be Barred.

White Cross League Bligh, or Blight, who blasts the innocence of children by tafking to them about' indecent matters, is just finishing an unwholesome tour of Canterbury, where the most prominent schools of the province have been opened to his perverted influence. The adresses (or undresses) are popular among youths whose budding sexual sensibilities render the prurient l muck of Blight a matter of peculiar attraction. Looking round the crowded auditorium of His Majesty's Theatre, Christchurch, on Sunday night, the spectator was saddened by the hundreds of faces of mere boys whose tender years forbade a full understanding of the horrible literal talk about male and female organs, but who grinned m pleased anticipation of prurient disclosures, and doubtless tested subsequently the pleasantness of the dreadful practices against which they were warned. What a hoy doesn't know after one of Blight's lectures isn't worth mentioning. That which is most surprising is the support he receives from personß of apparent respectability, who seen oblivious of the fact that youths GO AWAY AND EXPERIMENT

m forbidden things after a heart-to-heart talk with the miserable bounder, who has an unpleasant personality, and a voice as charming as the metallic rasp of a crosscut saw on an unsuspecting nail, Minister George Fowlds, Mar? Ann Aitken, and a person named Williams m Te Aute Save guaranteed £250 for the blastiferous excursion through the Dominion, and as the collections pan out well blue-tongue Blight is on a good wicket. What this paper is surprised at, Ms that no attempt is made by "the police to prosecute him under one. or other of the several enactments that cover public indecency. Blight talks coolly to the children m the most filthy manner about tho sexual organs, and mouths words which if published m a respectable family newspaper like John Norton's J-'Truth," would send the proprietor to gaol for 'the period of" a hunyred years, more or • less. Apparently somebody has been remonstrating with Blight, for he remarked that there was a great deal of prejudice about fyit-, ting these things plainly (the horrors mentioned), but he claimed that his lectures effected a decrease m immoral practices and an increase m the birth rate. The blighter described the process of matine, gestation, and birth, and remarked that it wasn't given to us' to know why the child should be a male/ or a female. If parents would only tell 'their children about the mystery of their birth, boyswould (ro about on tip-toe m the house while their mother was having a baby, but while the youngster was kept m ignorance, there was an absence of sympathy with the parent at the interesting period. (The snigcers at this stage were somewhat disconcerting.) The unembarrassed speaker i spoke gloatingly about the sensations of the boy who arrived at an acre when he felt a natural desire, for the other sex, and heard from outsiders

THE KOST FILTHY TALK about women, which caused him to lose respect for them. He also spoke with most disgusting plainness about the sin of immoral practices, and advised the boys to regard every girl as he would his own sister, and thus overcome sexual desire. Blight must have been spoken to about the impropriety of telling immoral victims that they were going mad, for ho assured the boys, with painful eagerness, that they would, retain their senses for they were going to discontinue it, and that sort of thing. Blight had the unexampled nerve to take all credit for the legislation suppressing quack doctors and the injurious quack, nostrums m New Zealand, which is a fairly large order, and merely illustrates the unmitigated egotism of the "purity" pimple. The man of the world, who advises, the pious, anaemic youth that he wili never he a man until he sins with a woman, was condemned with considerable enthusiasm. Blight explained that a man might live immaculately until he was 50, then marry and have a large family. The unsavory lecturer quoted the advice of a doctor to a young man who conrultal him. After an examination, the medico remarked^ "You had better go and sin with some woman." To this the religious youth had replied, "Yes, doctor, have you got a sister available." This 'brilliant spark of humor brought down the house, and elicited an encore. The 'improbability that such a clever rejoiner would occur to a youth like the doctor's patient didn't seem to occur to anybody,

BUT VIRTUE WAS VINDICATED, anyhow, and the practical doctor was condemned. The right kind of sawbones wouldn't suo-^est such a horrifying thing. The man who said it was only natural to have sexual intercourse was another dangerous person to society. The speaker rolled his tongue lovingly round a narrative of dire consequences of sexual sin out of wedlock, and drew a harrowins; picture of the seduced apd abandoned girl, abortion's artful aid. illegitimate birth m a home, hatred for the unauthorised infant, and finally the graduation of the girl ns a nr.os,sv ; her contraction of h horrible disease on the streets, and the transference by her of the contagion, perhaps to some saintly young man, who had never known women. Blight voiced the singular theory held m the brothel that sinfulncss with a really virtuous young man would cure the fallen woman OF A VILE DISEASE. The fevered lecturer gave a graphic description of sinfulness -with bad women, and betrayed a knowledge of the consequences astounding; m such a pious person .- for Blicl.it is pious. It' is true he didn't drag the name of God into the discussion until near the finish, but he dragged it m ; and the ordinary cleanminded spectator left the building feeling as though he would like a hath, and asjeing; himself : "What is impurity ? What is blasphemy ?"