THE SOCIAL EVIL.

White Ribbon, Volume 24, Issue 288, 18 June 1919, Page 2

THE SOCIAL EVIL.

REPRESSION OR EDUCATION?

One of th#* most vital questions in Hritain at the present moment concerns the possible spread of venereal disease among the civil population through the demobilisation of the troops. Certain Hritish Societies, in particular the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, and the Women’s Freedom League, are working hard to ventilate the whole problem, and are holding public and private meetings, to which questions and open discussion follow a short lecture or speech by some person of special experience and knowledge. Miss Picton-Turberville has at more than one such meeting spoken of her recent experiences of the campaign instituted in the United States against commercialised vice. Her account of the wave of enthusiasm which has swept over every State in that vast countrv almost takes one’s breath away. The reform, however, seems open to objections of the gravest kind. Extinction by order of the Red Light districts and the removing of all prostitutes from the streets in everv city and township has evidently succeeded in repressing the evil for the present. But what of the future? The measure was purely a war one. The purpose, to make the men “fit.” With their characteristic quick intelligence, the Americans have -cen that vice does not pay, therefore as the war was to Im* won, vice must go. The method of getting rid of the prostitutes is simple. Streets are patrolled and houses raided by an enormous foice, of plain-clothes detectives. If in any case a man acknowledges that he has given money to the woman with whom he has been sorting. she is taken to a place of detention (not a prison), but h»* goes scot-free. The moral degradation to the man seems not to be thought of. What is done to the prostitutes is not clearly known. Apparently they are detained till they are free from infe< tiorj. No means seems to be provided by which they can earn a living in any way, though the numbers must be far greater than the existing re formatones can deal with. It has surprised many womei. in Hritain to learn that the examination of prostitutes, which is regarded with such loathing and detestation by them, is the accepted rule in America. Another surprise is to learn that this work

of repressing vice is wholly in the hands of men. Women appear to know nothing about it. On the local /committees which arc appointed to see that the Federal Regulations are car riej out, there seem to be no women, except in the case of New York and Chicago, where there is in each case one woman, but she is along among fourteen or fifteen men. Not a fe*? thinkers in Britain consider that the forcible repression of evil for a material purpose involves a deeper moral degradation than even the vice itself. The wrong done to the soul is worse than the bodily disease. But by others forcible measures are advocated, and it is therefore well that the American solution of the question should be carefully considered and its results watched. One grand advance has been made in America which we in Britain would do well to copy. 1 allude to the splendid campaign in the schools against alcohol. It will hardly be believed that temperance propaganda is prohibited in the Government schools of London. As indulgence in alcohol is always the most powerful factor in stimulating sexual immorality, we maxhope that on the wise lines of education of the young, America will actually achieve the moral reform which repressive measures can never ensure.

About a year and a half ago, the Provincial Kqual Franchise Board or Saskatchewan, Canada, < ircularised the constituent societies of the British Dominion Women Citizens’ Union, regarding a campaign among the xxomen of the Empire. But we have heard nothing more about it, except that one great South African society approved of the idea. Nothing will help more effectually to set such a campaign on foot than for New Zealand women to keep us in Britain and in the other Dominions thorouglhy informed of what they are doing. The current number (February) of the “International Woman Suffrage News” contains a fuller account of the \merican reforms from the pen of Miss Pirton-Turberville herself, giving other features of deep interest. HARRIET C. NEWCOMB, Hon. Sec. British Dominions Women Citizens’ Union. London, February, iqiq.