GEMS FROM POLICE REPORT, 1915.

White Ribbon, Volume 21, Issue 243, 18 September 1915, Page 11

GEMS FROM POLICE REPORT, 1915.

Superintendent Kllison of Wellington District in his annual report says “If a respectable citizen has the misfortune to have a child taken ill of scarlatina, measles, or other infectious disease, he has to report at once to the health officer, but the avaricious money-making harlots, to whom I refer, are all at liberty to contaminate the nation from end to end, because innocent persons suffer —as do their children—just as much or more than the men who personally patronise these diseased women. One need not wonder at the number of young people wearing glasses, artificial teeth, and other evidences of constitutional weakness when female vultures are able to fatten and become wealthy while they disseminate disease in a wholesale manner." Commissioner Cullen in commenting upon the above report says, “As regards the larger question touched upon by the Superintendent, relative t<» the spread of venereal disease. I can only say that I fully endorse his remarks, and think it is a matter which should receive the attention of the Public; Health Authorities. While stringent regulations arc in force dealing with the isolation and treatment of other infectious and contagious diseases, no attempt is made to prevent these women from spreading a disease which is more injurious and far-reach-in its consequences.” * • la reading these extracts, one would think that only women were able to snread this disease as neither of these distinguished police officers asks for the Public Health Act to deal with naalu prostitutes, only women are mentioned. Now we object to all sex differentiation, but if only one sex is to be dealt with, we say the male prostitute is the more dangerouc to the health of the nation. There women could do no harm to innocent wives and children were it not for the male prostitute who resorts to them, and with criminal indifference goes home to take disease to unsuspecting wife and helpless infant. The mar, who resorts to these women knows perfectly well the risk he is running, and is no innocent victim. The young wife at home never suspects that the husband, who has sworn to love and cherish her, wilfully and cruelly brings to her .he deadly disease, which makes

her a life-long sufferer, renders her childless or *hc mother of diseased children, deprived of their right to be well-born, and doomed to misery, suffering and shame. In all ages of the world, men have tried in all ways to sin and avoid its consequences, but this is always impossible. The only way to get rid of venereal disease permanently is to avoid the sin which causes it. Scarlet Fever, Mague, Cholera, are dirt diseases, and while doctors use every endeavour to cure sufferers from these diseases, sanitary inspectors clean up the dirt conditions which cause them. t Yellow Fever flourished on Panama and other tropical regions, and was only banished when the swamps were drained and the mosquito, the carrier of disease germ was banished. While we believe in doing everything possible to help sufferers from venereal disease, we must face the fact that no treatment has ever been discovered \\hi<h cab gufiotn a cure.* This dreadful disease has been a mighty factor in the downfall of the great empires of antiquity. Let us not make the mistake they made, and try to cure the disease without ridding ourselves of the immorality which causes it. Let the White Ribbon women of our Dominion, the mothers of the race, set up the standard of the “white life for two.” When men live as chastely as their wives we shall hear no more of innocent women and children afflicted with venereal disease, even though “these women” be still with us.