Colour and morals
All this may be coincidence. The latitudes of the South-Western desert in the Northern hemisphere correspond with those of the South African veldt in the Southern hemisphere. Moreover, the population of the American desert region was about equal to the British Field Force in South Africa. The American frontiersmen wore blue, the British soldiers khaki. Passing from one region to the other, I was astounded by the contrast between the blue-clad frontier supporting four hundred riders by the single industry of robbery-under-arms, and the khaki-clad army which in three-and-a-half years scored only one act of robbery. The peaceful civil population was engaged in blood feuds, promiscuous homicide, and every kind of violent crime; while the fighting army won the hearty confidence of the Boer field force by its chivalrous protection of the Boer women. In the one case crime was universal, in the other almost unknown.
And this may still be all coincidence.
The Great War is fought, mainly in latitude of scant sunlight. The German forces, clad in blue-grey, have made a practice of rape, slaughter of women and children, torture and murder of prisoners, sacking and burning of cities, bombing of unarmed folk, fighting with liquid fire and with poisonous gas. The khaki clad armies have not as yet been charged with military crimes. The blue-clad French army has not fought among a foreign population, has not in fact been tempted or found a motive which makes crime attractive.
It is beyond the limits of coincidence that where large numbers of white men live an unsheltered life and wear a single colour, those dressed in blue are guilty—except the French—of violent crime, from which those dressed in compounds of red and yellow are altogether free.
Clothes and light
To the blue, indigo and violet rays of light a white man's body is transparent as so much water. When he lives outdoors his health is normal so long as his body is sheltered by colours which beat back the actinic rays of light. If he wears blue, white, grey or any other colour transparent to these rays, they burn right through him, destroying all germs of disease, and so allowing the body to develop tremendous energy—the keynote of frontier life. After a few years of this, the actinic rays begin to destroy the tissues of the body, and nerves break down. The symptoms of neurasthenia are:
(1) Hysteria, expressed in wanton crime.