A memorial, on the other hand, of sixty-one thousand four hundred and thirty-seven British women, and presented to the Government July 31, 1897, asserts:—
“No permanent diminution of disease will ever be attained by measures which do not strike primarily at the vice itself.”
The leader of the sixty-one thousand and more, Mrs. Josephine Butler, answers to the statement of the one hundred and twenty-three: “The confidence of ultimate victory based on a foundation which cannot be shaken, enables us to regard with composure the forward advance and claims of materialism and fleshly indulgence, and to compassionate those—furious against us to-day—who will be beaten to-morrow, and who will be forced, before the ‘great cloud of witnesses’ in heaven and earth, to confess themselves defeated and deserving of defeat.”
The cause of venereal disease is promiscuous relations carried to excess. The hope of eradicating such disease, then, by licensing its cause, betokens the extreme of moral blindness, and contradicts all science. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell says: “We may as well expect to cure typhoid fever whilst allowing sewer gas to permeate the house; or cholera, whilst bad drinking water is being taken, as try to cure venereal disease whilst its cause remains unchecked.”
A recent official plea for licensed prostitution in the Cantonments of India declares: “The efforts to teach the soldiers habits of self-control” have “signally failed.” We wish for a moment to consider the efforts that have been used in the past. There lies before us a copy of the “Report of the Army Health Association.” It was printed at Meerut, India, in 1892. We have also the subsequent reports for several years. In speaking of the efforts put forth to teach self-control, much is made of the work of this Association (see Departmental Committee Report, 1897, page 13), as a means that has been used. This report of the Army Health Association has printed on its cover such texts as, “Keep thyself pure,” “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption,” etc.; giving the impression that it is a religious document. In fact it is interspersed all through with Scripture quotations.
The introduction is signed by a Major-General, and the body of the report is written by an army chaplain, secretary to the Association, who has the title of Bachelor of Divinity. Four reverends beside, army chaplains, are named among the list of officers of the Association. The language employed in the report is often very obscure, and needs close analysis to get at its real meaning. The introduction is a plea for the re-establishment of the abolished system of Regulation, and is little more than the expression of a desire to have legal sanction for what they were already doing illegally, as the report shows, and it is doubtless for this very reason that the language is so obscure. In one place it speaks of the “Gospel duty of healing diseases in a compulsory way,” and as a precedent refers to the “Gospel record of healing even when a voice had come from the healed protesting against the cure.” Certainly blasphemy could scarcely go further than to liken the compulsory indecent exposure of a woman to a miracle of our Lord. Every soldier should “do his best,” says the report, “by the blessing of Almighty God, to resist all temptation leading to the evil.” Close inspection proves that in this case “the evil” in the mind of the writer is not the vice but the disease. The soldier is recommended to the task of attaining to “self-command on pass,” i.e., when outside the region of licensed brothels.
The report states that a “Handbook” has been circulated “to all fresh arrivals in India,” and the closing chapter of the report is a reprint of that Handbook, which is especially designed for army chaplains to circulate among the soldiers as a “religious” tract. Interspersed with the quotations of Scripture texts, is abominable instruction to the effect that a young man who will confine his visits to the Government licensed brothel can trust the Lord to keep him from contracting disease. This “religious” tract promises to keep infected women out of the chakla, and warns the soldier not to go “in an underhand way” to houses where he will not be protected from “disease.”
O mothers! can you conceive of what would be your feeling to discover that your eighteen-year-old boy, as is the son of many an English mother, was under such “gospel” instruction as this! “We shall never forget what we owe to Lord Roberts,” says the report; and we might have anticipated that the author of the “Infamous Memorandum” would likewise be the supporter of such measures for the instruction of young soldiers. Sir George White, who succeeded Lord Roberts as Commander of the Indian forces, said, in the Viceregal Council held in India, July 8, 1897, that “Every effort should also be made to warn young soldiers of the consequences of immorality in this country, to point out to them the terrible risks which they run, and to appeal to their higher moral instincts and to their pride in their manhood to avoid connections that carry with them grave danger that they will return home shattered wrecks, unfit alike for military duty or civil life.”
There is not one word here as though evil connections were likewise to be avoided, even if they were not supposed to carry danger of physical disease as a result. The “moral” teaching seems to have been all of that immoral sort that points toward the Government house of shame rather than to the seventh commandment. How many young soldiers may not have met their first temptation by having a superior officer point them to the Government-regulated chakla! Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell says truly: “The first indispensable condition in the prevention of disease is the steady discouragement of promiscuous intercourse. Now I assert positively that such discouragement has never been seriously tried in the army, by Government, but only by unofficial efforts—efforts which are most valuable, but entirely lacking in the force of organization, and in the important recognition and help which Government alone can afford.”