NATIONAL MENACE

Otago Witness, Issue 3250, 28 June 1916, Page 9

NATIONAL MENACE

STRAIGHT TALK TO MEN. The awakened public interest in the question of the menace of venereal disease in the community was reflected in the large crowds of men that made their way to iris Majesty's Theatre alter church on Sunday to hoar an illustrated address from Captain W. H. Pettit on the subject of "The Perils of Young Manhood." The building was filled to its utmost capacity at an early hour, and large crowds which besieged all the doors had to bo turned away. Dr Pettit, who proved himself a singularly eloquent and powerful speaker, carried his audience entirely with him, and broke through the " conspiracy of silence" said to surround this subject in very effective fashion. Colonel J. C'owie Nichols, V.D., presided, and was accompanied on the platform by the Revs. \V. Gray Dixon (president of the Council of Churches), G. lleighway. and R. S. Gray, Dr Riley, and Dr Bowie. The proceedings were opened with the National Anthem.

Dr Pettit, speaking first of the deadly conflict in which wo arc engaged, stated that venereal disease was one of the greatest causes of military inefficiency, raid therefore a great ally of our enemies. Every man who deliberately ran the risk of contracting disease that would make him unfit to servo his nation in her. hour of peril was a- traitor to his native land.—(Applause.) He was a traitor to the mother and sisters whom he claimed to go out to defend, and he was a traitor to the man beside him who lived a clean life and gave to his country his best.—(Applause.) Ho believed that every growing lad had a right to learn from pure and clean sources the facts concerning the developing powers of his own body.—(Applause.) '.There was a considerable amount of venereal disease in the camps of this country and a. con siderablo amount of it in our cities and in the community at large, as every medical practitioner knew; but the amount had been enormously increased owing to the immensely greater temptations which have beset our men, especially in Egypt. The conditions there were such that "no person living in the sheltered communities of this land could form the faintest conception of them. The latest figures lie had obtained placed the number of prostitutes in Cairo at 20,000, and the whole vile traffic was run upon the most elaborate business system. Every subtle and devilish device was used to entice men, and especially our soldiers. He was speaking recently to a returned officer, who described seeing the men arriving off one of our transports at Alexandria. Their eyes were literally standing out of their heads with amazement as they saw for the first time the extent and the openness of the vice in that city; and within three hours of their arrival they were standing in queues outside the closed doors of the brothels waiting their turn to go in. These were men just like themselves, but so inconceivably terrible were the conditions that that was what happened. Every man with any influence at all ought to demand that when the fathers and mothers of this conn try gave their sons into the keeping of our military leaders no fitonu should be' left unturned to protect them from these diseases. —(Applause.) This community had not yet begun to realise the terrible import of all this to the future life of this young country. Apart from the increase of these vilest and most loathsomo of diseases, there was the terrific danger because of thousands of men who were coming back physically clean, but with lowered social ideals—coming back to advocate licensed prostitution, and to east aside all ideas of the sanctity of the marriage tie. The physical corruption that followed in the wake of immoral practices was the outward manifestation of that mental, moral, and spiritual degradation which always inevitably followed in the wako of immorality of thought or word or act. These, diseases w.orc not only terrible in themselves, but were the mark of the judgment of God against the men who violated and set aside those eternal and immutable moral laws

which God had set at the foundation of our individual family and social life. Dr Pettit then began to sneak more particularly of the rat;ire and eil'ecte of venereal disease, an 1 outlined general pr eau lions to bo taken against contagion His remarks were »Ilu*tratcc! by a pauifuiiy effective series of lantern slides. If he believed, he said, that men could he adequately warned in any other way nothing would induce him to show slides -o horrible and so revolting, but he felt it was inliniteiv better that men should know the

whole truth.-—-(Applause.) After pressing home the horror of the consequences of impurity Dr Pettit set out the still more potent argument that its consequences could not be confined to the wrongdoers, but spread to associates, to the wife, and to the child, who was cursed from birth with a disease worse than death, because his father believed if; was "a natural thing to indulge his passions." In the concluding portion of his address Dr Pettit dealt with the ideal of personal purity, and how it might be attained. He dealt with the indisputable association oi alcohol and immorality, and effectively .adduced high medical testimony and the messages of General Birdwood and Lord Kitchener, and the Kuig's example in this connection. tie assured them that the one power by which a man might be kept in the hour of the fiercest temptation was the power of Jesus Christ. Dr Pettit was accorded a prolonged ovation at the close of his address. Dr Riley, who proposed a very hearty vote of thanks, said he was there to assure him ot the support of the medical profession. A hearty vote was also accorded Colonel Nichols.