The Facts

The vicar was shocked. For three months, on a hop-skip-&-jump tour of the U.S., he had talked to young people about their morals. Last week, back home at London's Holy Trinity Church, the Rev. Bryan Green shocked his congregation. "The morals of American students are deplorable," he said. "In the state universities at least 90% of the men students and 69% of the women have sex relations outside marriage. Intimacy between high-school students is very common."

U.S. editors and educators took the bait. Cried Josephus Daniels in the Raleigh News & Observer; "There was a time when a man uttering such an unsupported slander would have [had] his tongue cut out." Protested the Lawrence, Kans. superintendent of schools: "I just wish Mr. Green could have attended our junior-senior prom. . . ." The University of Wisconsin's dean of women coolly observed that "it is impossible for anyone to have the facts. . . ."

Where did the vicar get his information? From a U.S. sociologist, he said, but for the life of him he couldn't remember the name.

Another British vicar, the Rev. W. G. Hargrave Thomas of Needham Market, contributed a little shocker of his own: no "social stigma" should be pinned on spinster schoolmarms, he thought, if they felt like having a baby or two.

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