the expert judgment we have available within our borders enlisted
finally in a great campaign against gonorrhea and syphilis, it will have
accomplished a miracle, though it will have done no more than war has
done for Europe. If it leaves us even with our more progressive states
committed to an expanding program of universal efficient and accessible
diagnosis and treatment, it will have conferred a blessing.

+Relation of War to the Spread of Venereal Disease.+--The frequent
reference to the relation of war to the problems of sexual disease seems
to justify a concluding paragraph on this aspect of the matter. Much of
the impetus which has carried European nations so far along the road
toward an organized attack on syphilis and gonorrhea, as has been said,
is undoubtedly due to the realization that war in the past has been the
ally of these diseases, and that a campaign against them is as essential
to national self-defense as the organization of a vast army. Conflicting
reports are coming from various sources as to the prevalence of syphilis
and gonorrhea among European troops, although hopeful indications seem
to be that troops in the field may have even a lower rate of disability
than in peace times (British figures). The most serious risks are
encountered in troops withdrawn from the front or sent home on leave,
often demoralized by the strain of the trenches. The steady rise in the
amount of syphilis in a civil population during war is evidenced, for
example, by the figures of Gaucher's clinic in Paris, in which, just
before the war, 10 per cent of patients were syphilitic; after the first
sixteen months of the war 16.6 per cent were syphilitic, and in the last
eight months, up to December, 1916, 25 per cent had the disease. There
can be no doubt that a campaign of publicity can do much to control the
wholesale spread of infection under war conditions, and we should bend
our efforts to it, and to the more substantial work of providing for
treatment and the prevention of infectiousness, with as much energy as
we devote to the other tasks which preparedness has forced upon us. The
rigorous provisions proposed for continental armies should be carefully
studied, and in no cases in which either syphilis or gonorrhea is active
should leave or discharge be granted until the infectious period is
over. Compelling infected men to remain in the army under military
discipline until cured might have a deterrent effect upon promisc