The White Ribbon For God and Home and Humanity. SATURDAY, JULY 18, 1914.

White Ribbon, Volume 20, Issue 229, 18 July 1914, Page 9

The White Ribbon For God and Home and Humanity. SATURDAY, JULY 18, 1914.

Some time ago we directed attention to Dr. Hardwic k Smith’s report upon Venereal Diseases presented to the Wellington Hospital and Charitable Aid Hoard. The Hoard set up a committee to consider the report, and this committee brought down eleven recommendations, which we publish in this issue, together with a letter upon the subject from Miss Roberts, our Legal and Parliamentary Superintendent. With the first ten rccom- • mendations we are in hearty accord, but clause 11 asks the Minister for Public Health to have an Order-in-Council adopted giving effect to provisions contained in clause ig of the Hospitals and Charitable Institutions

Amendment Act, 1913. Now, clause K) we object to, because it provides for the compulsory detention of persons suffering from any contagious disease. We understand that all the Hospital and Charitable Aid Hoard a*>ks for is power to detain patients (who come to them voluntarily for treatment) until they can be discharged with safety to the public. These patients come for treatment, then go out for a time, and then back again. What the Hoard wants is power to keep them in the hospital, instead of allowing them to go in and out at pleasure, thus making a farce of the treatment and a convenience of the institution. Hut we fear that if clause i<) is put in force by an Ordcr-in-Council it will have more farrcaehing effects than the* Hoard contemplate. Now, in regard to any proposal made, we must ask not only is it intended fairly, but will it operate fairly. Now we fear clause iq would not operate fairly, however fairly in tended. Though no word is said in clause ic) re sex differentiation, in practical working it would tend to place women of a “certain class” un dor police control. We White Ribboners, who fought so long to get C.D. Acts repealed, can only view with indignation and alarm any attempt to regulate vice, or to treat the sexes differently in this matter. The root idea of C.D. Acts was to make vice safe for men. Women, and women only, were examined and forbidden to ply their ghastly trade unless they had .1 certificate that they were free from disease. These Acts failed to lessen the evil; in fact, wherever C.D. Ac ts were in forc e* men, believing vice >afe, sinned freely, and reaped the punishment of their sins. We don’t want to load this article with statistics, hut if any Union will send to us we can give pages of statistics proving that wherever C.D. Acts were in force syphilis was rampant, and when they were repealed sexual disease was not so common. How could scarlet fever or any similar disease be stamped out by only quarantining female patients and allowing males to go about and spread infection ? and yet this was what the C.D. Acts did. There is only one remedy for venereal disease, and that is chastity for men, the “white life for two,” and women should ever fight against anything that tends to lower this ideal. How

good women could believe that God created man that his necessities demanded the >ex slavery and degradation of so many women, and yet believe in Eternal Goodness, is to us one of the unsolved riddles of the universe. We do urge Unions, White* Ribboners, and women of the Dominion to be on the alert. Do not be deceived. Compulsory notification and compulsory detention have been proved by many eminent experts in older lands to defeat their own object. Patients will go to quacks if doctors are compelled to report them. Sufferers will not voluntarily present themselves for treatment if by so doing they are liable to be compulsorily detained. His Majesty, in speaking of tuberculosis, said, “If pieventable, why not prevented?” We ask the same question 111 regard to venereal diseases. Dr. White, writing in the •‘Eugenics Review” for October, ICJI3, says that treatment and education are the two weapons to be used in fighting this evil. Treatment for those who are diseased; education to prevent others contracting disease. And 111 the* work of education, what a responsibility rests upon mothers. It every mother 111 the Dominion did he* 1 duty to her own sons, how speedily would this evil be a thing c*T t.»e past. Mothers, teat h your boys in a pure way the facts of life*; teach them the responsibilities of fatherhood; teach them to treat their body as a “temple of the living God,” and see to it that they defile not the image of God in them. it is no light task reformers era bark upon to free this land from the* twin evils of clnnk and impurity. It will be a laborious work; it will tax every energy, but it will be worth while, for it is the c leansing of the portals of life.