The White Ribbon. For God and Home and Humanity MONDAY, MAY 18, 1914.

White Ribbon, Volume 19, Issue 227, 18 May 1914, Page 9

The White Ribbon. For God and Home and Humanity MONDAY, MAY 18, 1914.

We have before us two reports which should have the widest publicity and the most earnest consideration of every man and woman who has the highe-t welfaie <>f the State at heart. One is the report of the Special Committee on Syphilis, which was presented to the Medical Congress lately held in Auckland; the other is “Report on Venereal Diseases,” presented by Dr. Hardwicke Smith to the Wellington Hospital and Charitable Aid Hoard. Both admit the terrible prevalence of this disease and its fearful consequences on the physical and mental health of the nations. Dr. Smith speaks of it as “a nation destroying disease.” Both condemn “legalised vice.” Dr. Smith says: “The time has gone by when it was thought that the panacea for these ills was legalis

ed vice. Legalised vice never did good, and never will do good, and at the present time it is not necessary to discuss it. The C.D. Act and similar Acts, I hope, have been relegated to the past.” The Medical Committee reports: “The Committee takes it for granted that the profession and public generally deem police regulation of prostitution inadequate, inadvisable, and useless.” White Ribbon women have never had any doubts about C.D. Acts, but have fought them everywhere, and it is gratifying to them, after so many years of sneering at “silly sentimental women,” now to hear the highest medical and scientific opinion on their side. The doctors are urging that syphilis be placed among notifiable contagious diseases. Some would make notification compulsory, others would encourage notification, but not make it compulsory; but all are agreed that something must be done to stop the spread of this disease. It is stated on the best authority that “50 per cent, of mental defectives are caused by syphilis alone, a disease which is preventable, and should be stamped out, a disease far more fatal in its re>ults than is tuberculosis or cancer.” Before a Royal Commission, Dr. Mott stated “that w.thout syphilis there would be no general paralysis of the insane, a disease which gives 15 per cent, of patients at our mental hospitals.” Perhaps the saddest paragraph of all in this report, especially to mothers, is the following:—“The history of 34 syphilitic mother- gave 175 conceptions, resulting in 104 premature births, still births, and deaths in early infancy— 41 diseases in some serious form or other, and only 30 apparently healthy. So are the sins of the parents visited on the children. We talk glibly about filling the cradles, only to empty them again. Teach that the cradles be filled by healthy children. Better one cradle occupied by a healthy child than six cradles filled by diseased and dying children.” We are so pleased to note the doctor’s yvord in favour of >elf-restraint and self-control. In thinking of the cause of this evil, yvc mu-t admit it is largely due to false ideas of woman’s position. It yvas taught in the past that woman was created solely for man’s pleasure and

to minister to his comfort. She yvas alloyved no life of her oyvn apart from him. Women themselves acquiesced in this teaching, and to-day the ra<c is suffering because they did. So now yvomen are awakening to the fact that (»od created them living souls, responsible to Him alone; that Eternal (-oodness never created man that his necessity should demand the degradation of a large class of yvomen. To day, as never before, women are realising their responsibilities to the child, and are demanding from the man who unites with them in creating a new life that he shall be as pure as she is, and give to that iiild its divine right ot being well born. Women s live- have been cheaply held in the past. Said a doctor, turning from the deathbed of a voung yvife: “If I told the truth i ,-hould say her hu-band killed her.” Another doctor exclaimed indignantly: “I have just come frem the deathbed of a mother. Three years ago I told her husband that maternity yyas too great a ri-k for her, and she would not survive. Well, I saved her life once after that, but this time I could not, and she has gone leaving a tiny motherless babe.” Had those hu-bands risked the livrs of their yyives by yielding to anger or carele--ne-s, it yvould have been manslaughter, but because it yvas sexual passion, man-made 1 a\\ passes it by. Are not mothers’ lives held cheaply? Wh.it is the remedy 5 Education. Teach our boys as well as our girls to exercise -elt-< ontrol; teach them that their sins will not orrlv be vi-ited upon themselves, but upon innocent wives and helpless children. Demand from our boys the same standard of living yyhich yve do from our girl-. Mothers should expect their boys to be pure, should not look lightly on the “soyving of yvild oats.” The other remedy is preventing the unfit, the drunkard, the diseased, and the morally degenerate fri m reproducing their kind. At the Magistrate’s Court in Wellington a few days ago tyvo men were being tried for living on the immoral earnings of a yvoman. Said In-pector Hendry: “Your Worship has not power to punish these men as they deserve Had you the poyver you yvould send them to the I )estructor.” Without urging anything so drastic as this, yve yya.uid certainly segregate these undesirables. In America

statistic-S were kept of one family of criminals for several generations. Over 90 per cent, of them were inv beriles or criminals. We advocate three lines along which which to work for the betterment of the race —

(i) Improve the position of women by removing every sex disability.

12) Kducate the young to a knowledge of their own body, that they ma> treat it with reverence as the “temple of the Holy Ghost”; and (5) Legislate to prevent the physically, mentally, or morally diseased from reproducing their own kind.