The Admiralty has decided to employ women on various duties on shore hitherto done by naval ratings, and to establish a Women's Royal Naval Service. The women will have a distinctive uniform and the service will be confined to women employed on definite duties directly connected with the Royal Navy. It is not intended at present to include those serving in the Admiralty departments or the Royal Dockyards or other civil establishments under the Admiralty. There are thousands of women in these already, as there were in Army pay offices, etc., before the Waacs were formed.
Dame Katherine Furse, G.B.E., will be Director of the Women's Royal Naval Service, and will be responsible under the Second Sea Lord, for its administration and organization.
Already we hear they are likely to be known as the "Wrens." And so our women are inside the organized forces of defence of our Country—the last line of usefulness and service.
CHAPTER XII
THE WAR AND MORALS
"Evils which have been allowed to flourish for centuries cannot be destroyed in a day. If the nation really wishes to be freed from the consequences of prostitution it must deal with the sources of prostitution by a long series of social, educational, and economic reforms. The ultimate remedy is the acceptance of a single standard of morality for men and women, and the recognition that man is meant to be the master and not the slave of his body. There are thousands of men both in the army and out of it who know this, and for whom the streets of London have no dangers."
—Dr. HELEN WILSON.
The unprecedented state of things produced by the war brought in its train serious anxiety as to moral conditions, not only in regard to the relation between the sexes but in other ways. The gathering of every kind of man together in camps creates great problems. Young boys, who had never been away from home before, who know very little of the world or of temptations, were often flung in with very undesirable companions. There were many risks and many hard tests and the parents who see their young boys go to camp without preparing them, or warning them, do their boys a great disservice and I have known of sons who bore in their hearts a feeling of having been badly treated by their parents, that would never die, for being sent without a word of counsel into these things.