men, and similar campaigns will be conducted in the camps in the
United States and on shipboard before the troops reach France.
Second, a positive program for the occupation and amusement of the men
will be provided. Athletic sports, games, tournaments, track meets,
and other events will offer adequate physical facilities. Amusements,
entertainments, concerts, classes, and lectures will be arranged for
the mental occupation of the men. Meetings, personal interviews, and
services will be planned to keep before them the moral and spiritual
challenge and the call for clean living. Special campaigns will be
carried on in all Y M C A huts from time to time.
Third, we would favor strict regulations and penalties to cope with
immorality. We are glad that the selection of camp sites for the
American troops in France is being made at places as far removed from
the temptations of the cities as possible, where the men will be kept
under closer supervision than could be done if the troops were located
near large centers of population. Other means are being provided which
cannot here be mentioned.
In the fourth place, we favor adequate medical provisions, coupled with
the highest moral restraints. We will take our stand against any
league with vice, against any recognition of immorality as a "necessary
evil." We will stand against all notices, lectures, or medical talks
such as are given in some quarters, which practically serve as an
invitation or solicitation to immorality. We would oppose any
provision on the part of the authorities to provide in advance for
immorality, to standardize it, accept it, and attempt to render it
safe, and we would oppose any mention of it which tends to advertise
and increase the evil. We would strenuously oppose the running of
supervised houses of prostitution by our own military authorities, as
was done by some of them on the Mexican border. Conceivably a system
of inspected government houses and of prophylactic measures might be
devised which would eliminate disease altogether, and yet demoralize
the young manhood of our nation by a cynical scientific materialism
such as we are fighting against in the powers that dragged the world
into this war. We are more opposed to immorality than to disease,
which is its penalty. We fear not only the impairment of the physical
fitness of the men as a fighting force, but much more the menace of the
moral degradation of the manhood of the nation
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