It is easy to assume that the compulsory periodical examination of women will check diseases due to vice; but the assumption has never been proved. The statistics of the years during which the C. D. Acts prevailed in certain military stations in Great Britain, as compared with the statistics of later years, show a marked decrease since repeal took place, and therefore that the compulsory examinations in no way diminished disease, but rather the contrary. And when an unbiased person thoroughly investigates the history of the controversy on the subject, and is made acquainted with the course of deceit which has been practised in the past by Anglo-Indian[6] advocates of licensed vice, in order to maintain an odious system, a belief in Indian military assertions will not be inspired. The statement is being heralded to the world that over half the British army in India is suffering from diseases due to vice. Yet Lord George Hamilton, Secretary of State for India, was obliged to explain in the House of Commons, January 25, 1897, that while it had been reported that the aggregate of admissions to hospital for venereal diseases among the British troops in India amounted in 1895 to 522 per thousand, “This does not mean that 522 men per thousand were separately and individually admitted, still less does it indicate that 522 soldiers per thousand are incapacitated for duty from this cause. It is calculated on the latest returns that an average permanent reduction of 46 per thousand is the loss entailed by these diseases.” In other words, instead of over half being incapacitated from military duty, less than one in twenty is off duty from this cause mentioned. The larger number, which is calculated to startle the public into submission to the demands of certain Anglo-Indian officials, has been secured on the assumption that every “admission” into hospital means a fresh case, whereas it has been conceded that all re-admissions from relapse, and every stage of the progress of disease which requires a new diagnosis, has been reckoned as an “admission.” A Member of Parliament who has been enquiring about the hospital records, says:
“I have before me the hospital sheet of a man who was in hospital from January 1st to January 25th in one year. During that time the medical description of his disease was changed four times, and the man is formally entered and discharged and re-admitted on each of these occasions, the date of each discharge and admission being entered in the column provided for the purpose. So that this one man, who has been only once in hospital during the year, actually furnishes four ‘admissions’ to the official record. The same man was again in hospital from the 1st to the 30th of May, in the following year, during which time the diagnosis being three times changed, he was entered as admitted and discharged three times.”
Statistics compiled on this basis are absolutely worthless for the purposes of argument, and indicate, when so used, a lack of conscience as to exact truthfulness. The official figures of the Indian Army (included in the Report of the Departmental Committee of 1897, strongly advocating a return to licensed prostitution), lie before us. It cannot be said that such a report would be likely to minimize the amount of disease, yet this report, on page 9, distinctly states: “In 1895 an average of 45 men per thousand, or 3,200 in a force of 71,031 British soldiers in India, were constantly in hospital for venereal diseases.” Certainly this is sufficiently conclusive. The statement is heralded to the world that all England is becoming infected from the troops of diseased soldiers who return yearly to the home-land. One advocate of licensed prostitution in India says that “thirteen per cent.” of the British soldiers are “annually invalided home hopelessly incurable for military purposes.” But referring to the same official statistics, embodied in the Departmental Committee’s Report, we find that from the year 1887 to the year 1895, 681 men out of the force of 70,000 and more, were invalided home from these diseases, or, on an average, 76 men annually out of the whole force of 70,000; that is, one-ninth of one per cent. Such unworthy attempts to frighten an unwilling Christian public into acceding to the return to a system of licensed prostitution, cannot be too strongly condemned. Many well-meaning persons, on the assumption that “figures will not lie,” are repeating these exaggerated assertions, and will not take the trouble of investigating for themselves. The Army Sanitary Commission testified in 1894 that “a compulsory Lock Hospital system in India has proved a failure.” There could be no higher authority to quote; and the attempt to check diseases of this sort by the compulsory Lock Hospital system had then been carried on for the good part of a century in India. If the case could not be proved by such a prolonged experiment, involving such injustice to women, surely all honest people should be ready to favour its abandonment.
But it is proposed now in certain quarters to examine men as well as women. Two wrongs do not make a right. Equality of degradation is not the sort of equality for Christians to desire. Bring the test home. Could the reader, without committing sin, go to a physician to be examined in order to discover whether he or she is “fit” to practise fornication? Then the State that requires such an act becomes guilty in the sight of God of committing the act. The guilt of that which is done under actual compulsion rests wholly upon the State or individual that thus enforces wrong-doing. The one who advocates the compulsory examination of women stands guilty before God as the perpetrator of the outrage. It is a fearful thing when the State becomes the perpetrator of such sin. We know it is argued that the women and men subjected to such regulations would be only those who are willing to submit. We will dwell on that point a little further on; at present it is enough to say, that because a thief is willing to steal, the State is no less guilty that obliges him to steal.
Certain women are, it seems, being deceived by the pretence that laws are to be passed which will compel men to attend the periodical examination. What is the use of women clamouring for such a law as long as men enact and enforce all our laws? Men will never legislate themselves into the degradations and inconveniences of the compulsory periodical examination, and go to reside in hospitals as long as they are afflicted with disease. Will the Cantonment magistrate leave his judicial bench to go and sit in the Lock Hospital idly until he is no longer a source of danger to the community? Will the colonel of a regiment leave his soldiers to mutiny while he goes to reside in a Lock Hospital for a term of weeks? Such talk is the merest nonsense until only men of good morals control military affairs, and if they did there would be small demand for Lock Hospitals in India. The young soldiers could be readily trained to decency were it not for the utterly dishonouring views of life held by most of the high-titled officials over them. On this very proposal to examine men, the Secretary for War, Lord Lansdowne, said in the House of Lords, in the debate that took place May 17, 1897: “I have discussed that proposal with many high authorities, and I am bound to tell your lordships that the conclusion to which I am disposed to arrive is that this practice of regular inspection did not produce the desired effect; and that it was, on the contrary, regarded, and rightly regarded, by the men as a brutalizing and degrading practice.” It has therefore been boldly determined and declared that men shall not be subjected to periodical examination (although there is not the faintest possibility of their ever being subjected to this humiliation by physicians of the opposite sex), for it is “brutalizing and degrading.”[7] Yet it is these very men who are directly responsible for bringing disease back to England; for the native women do not go to England. The argument is, that since it brutalizes and degrades men to cause them to be examined, that they may not propagate disease in England, therefore the native women of India must be brutalized and degraded. It is useless to assert that the practice will not degrade women; we know that the moral nature of a woman is at least as susceptible of being injured by enforced immodesty as that of a man; in fact, as soon as it would serve any purpose in making a point in the interest of self, these very men would boldly proclaim, probably, the greater moral susceptibility of woman. It seems the extreme of servility for women to come to the front at this time, and in the face of the utter repudiation of all intention of examining men, declare for the examination of women. When men will not yield their dignity one jot, even for the sake of preserving the health of those women of England who are to become their future wives, what insolent hypocrisy for them to persuade deluded women to help them to bring women under practices so “degrading and brutalizing!” What infinite capacity of servility in the nature of women who will advocate such degrading, brutalizing treatment of women!
But, we may be asked, Shall women show no concern for the “innocent wives and children” of diseased men? Again we ask, Which wives and which children—the British or the Indian? There are hundreds of such wives and children who have been forsaken by husbands and fathers. There is almost a nation of Eurasians who curse the day they were given an unwelcome existence. And their mothers, in large numbers, were honestly married, to their best belief and intention. Here are the real wives and the real children in the sight of a just God, and to them should England’s attention be first turned. The chaklas hold many such unwilling prisoners, left there by treacherous husbands and fathers. Some day this wife of the officer or soldier will be turned out to perish of the disease her system could no longer throw off, and the children will either be retained as soldiers’ prostitutes or sent out to share the fate of the diseased mother. The women of England are being besought to turn their eyes on the future wives of British officers and soldiers; it would be for England’s lasting good would they but persistently keep their eyes on the British officers’ and soldiers’ present wives and children in the far-off East. Were attention more persistently called to the Indian wife of the British soldier, there would be much less likelihood of his finding opportunity to entrap an innocent wife in the home-land.
It was suggested, in the first instance, by Sir George White, successor to Lord Roberts as Commander-in-Chief of the forces in India, and re-incorporated in the despatch of the Secretary of State as to immediate steps to be taken to check venereal disease, that female medical assistants be employed to conduct the examinations. It is our belief that respectable women-physicians wish to treat disease—not prostitution. Even if such were given the full control of Lock Hospitals, which is not likely, we wonder how many would like to return to their own country bearing certificates for faithful service, such as Mahaldarni Ezergee of the Cantonment of Rawal Pindi displayed to us with such evident pride, that she had been trained in other besides the ordinary duties of a mahaldarni: “The soldiers were remarkably healthy while the prostitutes were under her charge.” Again, another officer had testified: “Few soldiers were in the hospital while the women were under her care.” The surgeon of the regiment had testified: “Disease has been reduced to a minimum among the soldiers,” while the women were under Ezergee, “superintendent of the prostitutes.” This is what Lady Cook describes in a recent American periodical as “ministrations to women,” while the certificates show that everything that was done was valued only as it protected the soldiers in vice; the indications as to the health of the women are never once even commented upon—all the work for women was done with reference to men. This being the fact, it is no wonder that in the official reply from India, dated May 18, 1897, and signed by the Viceroy, Sir George White, and others, it is declared that “It is doubtful whether the women possessing the necessary medical qualifications, and of a status sufficiently good to preclude the possibility of their receiving bribes from the women they have to examine, would be willing to undertake the work.”[8]
As regards the examination of the women, we take a chapter out of the history of our India work, in illustration, as recorded in our Journal: