I have found soldiers who are a disgrace to the uniform; there are individual cases and there are groups of cases that give me keen regret. I wish that the army had a "Botany Bay," that those who insist upon practising the indecencies could be segregated. However few these men are,—and they are indeed the small minority,—they constitute a menace to morale, and exert a demoralizing influence upon those with whom they are associated. Then, too, there are a few officers who represent the old idea that the soldier is necessarily a victim of his passions, and must be allowed, even encouraged, to gratify them. But such officers are in a decreasing ratio to the whole, and privates who bring an unfavorable judgment upon their country are the exceptions, that assist in proving the rule.
On one occasion two hundred men from just-arrived transports began their self-appointed task of painting a certain French city a livelier hue. Very quickly they discovered that "decorators" of their class were not in demand. The naval patrol sent them back to the ships with battered heads and wiser minds. Two hundred men out of more than fifteen thousand tried to be naughty, and failed! I can imagine a lurid head-line, "Recently Arrived Soldiers Paint City Red." Such a head-line would have been unfair and untrue. That story of a thousand men from the rural community of northeastern America is absolutely false. I have investigated it in every French port where American troops land and in in every other place where any considerable number of our men have been quartered. My inquiries have followed three lines, the military, the Y. M. C. A., and civilians. While conditions were worse at the beginning, before our military authorities had their own police programme operating, nothing at all approaching this condition ever existed.
Our leaders in France have not conquered the vices that society has battled against from the first organized beginnings of civilization; but, if the American Expeditionary Force is not setting an example in moral idealism to American civilian life, then I have walked through France with my eyes closed and my ears stopped.
When you see one soldier under the influence of liquor, do not conclude that the army is drunk! It is at least suggestive that in three months spent in England and France, associated with tens of thousands of soldiers, I did not see a single soldier, officer or private, under the influence of liquor on the street, in a public conveyance, or in a public building.
When you hear of one syphilitic, or a hundred, do not traduce en masse the flower of American manhood now transported to the richly watered fields of France. An investigation made by a prominent jurist of the United States, who is also a leading layman of the Methodist Church, revealed the following conditions in a certain port of landing. This city has long borne the reputation of being among the most immoral of Europe. The survey covered both white and black troops, and was made in areas personally inspected by the writer.
The record for venereal diseases for four months preceding my visit was:
| Colored Troops | White Troops | ||||||||
| First Month, | |||||||||
| 108.7 | men | in | each | thousand. | 16.89 | men | in | each | thousand. |
| Second Month, | |||||||||
| 30.9 | " | " | " | " | 12.5 | " | " | " | " |
| Third Month, | |||||||||
| 21.2 | " | " | " | " | 8.7 | " | " | " | " |
| Fourth Month, | |||||||||
| 11 | " | " | " | " | 2.11 | " | " | " | " |
Many of these men were found to be infected when they reached France. Army discipline, it will be seen, soon produced results. The rate of venereal disease for white men when I left that city was less than one-fourth of one per cent and for colored soldiers, just about one per cent.
Let us think of our army division in terms of a modern American city, a city of men, women, and children. But here are cities of men only, men between twenty-one and thirty-one. Yes, men between seventeen and thirty-one. Young men, red-blooded, far from home, inhabit these war cities. Put such a city into your moral test-tube! Is it not inspiring beyond words that these cities, by the records of the Surgeon-General and from the reports of General Pershing, show a venereal rate far below that of civilian life, and a decreasing rate; that they show little drunkenness? And every statement of the War Department concerning these vital matters has been substantiated by my own investigations.