"I was again in charge of the same institution when every inmate was born during, or soon after the war, when the mothers were reading, talking and dreaming of battles, and of husbands, fathers or brothers who had gone to the war.
"I found as great a difference in the character of those inmates born before and after the Civil War as exists between a civilized and a savage nation.
"Those under my care the second time were much more difficult to control, more quarrelsome and defiant, less willing to work or study. The crimes for which they were sentenced were as different as their characters.
"It was not uncommon for them to be sentenced for breaking and entering with deadly weapons.
"This difference was not confined to inmates of reform schools, but it was manifest throughout all classes.
"After the war crimes increased rapidly. In Boston garroting was common, and was only checked by Judge Russell sentencing all such subjects to the full extent of the law.
"Before the close of the Civil War the State Prison at Charlestown, under Mr. Gideon Haynes, was, according to Dr. D. C. Wines, D. D., the model prison of the United States. Since that time it has been almost impossible to maintain proper discipline, owing, no doubt, to the more desperate character of the inmates.
"Let us try to trace these effects back to their causes, and prove, if possible, that whatsoever a man (or nation) soweth, that shall it also reap."
But there are other ways in which war militates against the noblest motherhood. Camp life is a school for vice and prostitution. In Camp Chickamauga, which is a sample of them all, during the war with Spain on account of Cuba, the amount and baseness of the prostitution by the soldiers, with both black and white women, exceeded description. In a single day forty-one cases of specific disease applied to the physicians at the hospitals for treatment. These things were not reported in the daily papers; they were too vile. The place was a hot-bed of vice, rather than a school of virtue and patriotism. In all European armies it is the same. In times of peace, soldiers from the highest to the lowest in rank, insist that facility shall be allowed them for the gratification of their passional natures. The officers, not being permitted to marry unless they or their wives have a certain income, keep their mistresses, and not a female servant near a camp is safe. The immoral influences here generated spread throughout society, lower the standard of morals among both men and women in private life, and jeopardize the interests of children born or unborn, morally and intellectually, as well as physically.
But there is another view. "Great standing armies," says the Czar of Russia, in his note to the Powers, "are transforming the armed power of our day into a crushing burden which the people have more and more difficulty in bearing."
