RAVAGES OF VENEREAL

Northland Age, Volume 14, Issue 33, 26 April 1917, Page 7

RAVAGES OF VENEREAL

THE following is an extract from a letter from a correspondent (a member of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force) at Sling Camp, England, we publish it as an illustration of the urgent need to deal promptly and effectively with the social evil: —

“Reference to our physical fitness brings me to a subject which has no right to be tabooed. Willtin 300 yards of me as I write is a great barbed wire enclosure containing 1500 men suffering from venereal disease. Poor devils! In an address the other day the G.O.C. warned the men of the perils which beset them here, and told them that in England there are 35,000 soldiers in segregation because of venereal disease. This was an under-estimate, for today I saw figures giving the total at 48,000. Think of it! Three army divisions out of action, many of them for all time. The Australian and New Zealand cases total over 5000. And the pity of it! How much of it is due purely to colossal ignorance ? The big cities here are rife with prostitution. The other Sunday night I was in Southampton. In an hour in High Street I saw more evidence of prostitution than I saw in Elizabeth Street, Sydney, in a year —and that is saying a lot. To-day I heard an experienced officer lecture a body of men, and he told them that the evils of Cairo were as nothing to the lures of London, and of what is known as the flapper element he warned them in particular. Don’t cut this paragraph out, Mr Editor, please. Let the figures speak for themselves ; let the facts sink in. Some day the nation will wake up and tackle this great problem. Why must it always be handled with the gloves on ? Crass ignorance is the cause of the downfall of half these boys. And, oh, the pity of it!