t of some thousands
of similar cases in France. The _London Daily Mail_ of April 25th,
1917, referring to the report of the military authorities to the House
of Commons, stated that there had been some two hundred thousand cases
of venereal disease in the British Army in France alone. This does not
include England or the men on the other fronts. The British Army is
not worse than others. Professor Finger, at a meeting of the Medical
Society in Vienna early in the war, estimated that over 700,000, or
some ten per cent of the Austrian troops, had contracted venereal
disease. More ominous still is the fact that in almost every place yet
investigated the majority of the men were confessedly living in
immorality amid the temptations of the base camps in France.

As we visit the hospitals in France, we are saddened by the fact that
for one of the two venereal diseases no cure has yet been found, that a
large proportion of these cases suffer a relapse, and that over seventy
per cent will develop complications. As one Commanding Medical Officer
said, "There is enough venereal disease in these military camps now to
curse Europe for three generations to come."

One young major said: "Every day I am losing my boys. I've lost more
men through these forces of immorality than through the enemy's shot
and shell." The recent report of the Royal Commission shows the grave
menace of the disease to Britain, where twenty per cent of the urban
population has been infected. Flexner's terrible indictment in his
"Prostitution in Europe" proves how particularly dangerous and
pernicious is the system of inspection and regulation which legalizes
and standardizes vice as a "necessary evil" and spreads disease through
the false sense of security which it vainly promises. Even if the
inspection and regulation of vice were physically perfectly successful,
it might still lead to national degeneration, but instead of being a
success it has proved, especially in France, a miserable failure. We
cannot place all the blame upon local conditions, for the presence of
an army in a foreign land in wartime creates its own danger.

Among the men in the venereal hospitals of France are musicians,
artists, teachers, educated and refined boys from some of the best
homes, and in another camp we find several hundred officers and several
members of the nobility. What was the cause of their downfall? A
questionnaire replied to by several hundred of them