"Blatantly Easy"

"We all know that sex is supposed to be one of God's greatest gifts to the human race," said the Venerable Donald B. Harris, archdeacon of Bedford, "but it has become misused by men."

The archdeacon, his fellow churchmen and a goodly number of British city fathers were outraged by the ease with which Britons could obtain contraceptives at any hour of the night by dropping 2 shillings in a slot machine handily placed before closed stores. This service was damned last week by the British Association of Municipal Corporations as "harmful and dangerous to the individual and the state, especially to young people." The association wanted the government to ban the slot machines.

Geoffrey Francis Fisher, archbishop of Canterbury and vice president of the Alliance, society for the encouragement of sex education, backed the demand. "I am not saying," he insisted, "that the obtaining of contraceptives in the ordinary way by adults should be curtailed. It is the indiscriminate, uncontrolled provision of them that is entirely evil. Children growing up in a world in which it is hard for them to avoid knowing too much about sex . . . now find it blatantly easy to turn their knowledge into practice."

From the government's point of view, there was a hitch. It was impossible without special parliamentary legislation, said the Ministry of Supply, to ban one kind of slot machine without banning them all. A machine built to sell candy bars could just as easily sell contraceptives provided they were wrapped in the same package. Besides, said the ministry, slot machines of all types were an important item in Britain's export program.

Humphed Alderman S. F. Johnson of Southend-on-Sea, determined to carry the campaign to Parliament: "We are not satisfied to pervert the morals of our own children. We want to pervert the minds and morals of all the nations of the world."

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