“I know of a hospital for venereal cases which it was found necessary to expand from its normal accommodation for 500 or 600 up to 2,000 cases, and they are continually full. It is a British hospital in France. A figure I should like to submit to challenge is that during the course of the war between 40,000 and 50,000 cases of syphilis have passed through our hospitals in France. When you come to gonorrhœa, the figure given me which covers that is between 150,000 and 200,000 cases.”
Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917
“Every Canadian soldier who comes to this country arrives here not only a first-class specimen of a fine soldier, but as clean-limbed and as clean a man as the Creator Himself could create. The fact that in one only of the three Canadian camps in this country 7,000 of these clean Canadian boys went through the hospital for venereal disease in fourteen months is not only a great discredit to any Government in this country but has an effect in Canada which I can assure the House does not make for a better feeling with the Home Country, and does not make for what we all desire—Imperial Unity.”
Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood in Parliament, April 23, 1917
Those are unchallenged statements made in the House of Commons itself; they stand as a terrible indictment of this disease, and it is not to be denied that this evil could never have reached its present frightful proportions if Parliament had followed the King. Let us look at a few examples of the ravages of this vice allied so closely to the public-house.
It is not possible to tell the whole truth about drink; the language in which it must be written would be offensive in a civilised country. It must be said, simply, that soldiers in England have been court-martialled for having been influenced by drink to commit unspeakable offences against animals.
Facts in Records of Court-Martials
A special constable in a harlot-haunted district in London describes how these harpies carry off lonely soldiers to their rooms, make them drunk, and finally innoculate them, as likely as not, with disease. Is it not possible to hold in check these women who prey upon and poison our soldiers? asks Sir Conan Doyle.
Letter in the “Times”
One of the hot-beds of venereal disease to which drink leads our soldiers, was kept by an Austrian woman in Lambeth, who was receiving 15s. a week from the Austrian Government in April 1916, and used to lure our soldiers when weakened by drink. All the men seen to enter this house were either soldiers or sailors.