And then if the reader could witness the “round-up” the night before the ship sets out to sea again,—could see scores of fine young marines, pride of loving mothers,—if the reader could see them taken on board dead drunk and horribly befouled, taken on board in wheel barrows and dumped like big lumps of diseased, drunken, snoring and slobbering flesh, to be sobered up and “treated” when the ship gets out to sea,—if the reader could see all this and very much more, for example in New York harbor, he would then better understand why very few of “our very best people” of the “upper class” are not easily wheedled into giving up their own sons to defend our great and glorious country on board a big steel fighting machine called a battleship—to cruise and carouse around the world. Just in proportion as the working class mother thinks about this matter her sons will be safer from the wheedling seductions of the recruiting officer.
Mothers, what is the blind sentiment that makes you clap your hands in admiration of the “great statesmen” or the “great government” that has prostitutes examined for the sons you bore and carefully reared and tenderly love?
“Lead us not into temptation,” said Jesus Christ. Yet a “civilized” Christian government recently not only examined, but provided prostitutes for the soldier boys. The great British Government within recent years provided prostitutes for her soldiers in India. Circular memoranda were sent to all the cantonments of India by Quarter-Master General Chapman, in the name of the commander-in-chief of the army of India (Lord Roberts). Here are three excerpts from those documents and from official reports:[[259]]
“In regimental bazaars it is necessary to have a sufficient number of women; to take care that they are SUFFICIENTLY ATTRACTIVE; to provide them with proper houses, and above all to insist upon means of ablution being always available [to prevent venereal diseases].... If young soldiers are carefully advised in regard to the advantages of ablution, and recognize that convenient arrangements exist in the regimental bazaar (that is, in the chacla, or brothel), they may be expected to avoid the risks involved in association with women who are not recognized [that is, not examined and licensed] by the regimental authorities.”
Another commanding officer writes in his report:
“Please send young and attractive women as laid down in the Quarter-Master General’s circular, No. 21A.... There are not women enough; they are not attractive enough. More and younger women are required.... I have ordered the number of prostitutes to be increased ... and have given special instructions as to additional women being young and of attractive appearance.”
And this: “The total number of admissions to hospital of cases of venereal diseases amongst troops in India rose in 1895 to 522 per 1,000.”
And this from another authority:[[260]]
“In 1902, in India, the enormous number of 12,686 men were admitted into hospitals suffering from sexual diseases alone; more than 1,000 military victims were always in the hospital—and the report from which these figures are taken deals with the healthiest year for 20 years past. In the Home Army ... in a single period of twelve months, of 154,000 troops, there were 24,176 sexual complaint cases—or one in every six. In the author’s judgment, 80 per cent. of the entire British Army in India, and a proportion slightly smaller for the Home Army, have been at some time affected.”
“The worst of war and war service is that the soldier is a ruined man.”[[261]]