‘The Commander-in-Chief desires that in making recommendations for selection for promotion regard should be had to the example set to the soldier. No man, however efficient in other respects, should be considered fit to exercise authority over his comrades if he is of notoriously vicious and intemperate habits. ‘The Commander-in-Chief is confident that officers, non-commissioned officers, and men in the Queen’s service will spare no pains to remove from the army the reproach which is due to a want of self-restraint on the part of a comparatively small number of soldiers, and that officers of all ranks will do their utmost to impress on their men that, in the important considerations of morality and temperance, soldiers of Her Majesty’s army should, as befits their honourable calling, compare favourably with other classes of the civil population. ‘WAR OFFICE, ‘_April 28, 1898_.’ FOOTNOTES: [7] In the alarming statistics of disease circulated by the Press no distinction was drawn between gonorrhœa and syphilis, yet the larger part of the Government returns of Army Venereal Disease refer to gonorrhœal affections.--See _Report of Departmental Committee_, 1897, p. 27. [8] See Appendix (p. 105). See also Dr. T. More Madden in _Medical Annual_, 1897; Dr. W. J. Sinclair’s _Gonorrhœal Infection in Women_; Researches of _Sanger_ and other German Investigators; Dr. Lawson Tait on _Diseases of Women_; and _The Pathology and Treatment of Diseases of the Ovaries_, 1877 and 1883, etc. [9] See _The Human Element in Sex_, pp. 22, 23, and pp. 47-58. [10] See Hirsch, _Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology_, vol. ii., chap. ii. (The New Sydenham Society). [11] Since the above was written an event has occurred full of hope for the future. See Appendix II. (p. 109). RESCUE WORK IN RELATION TO PROSTITUTION AND DISEASE _An Address given at the Conference of Rescue Workers held in London, June, 1881_ RESCUE WORK The letter inviting me to take part in your deliberations proposed many important subjects for discussion, and, amongst others, the subject of venereal disease amongst the fallen. On this point I was asked more especially to give information. I esteem it a privilege to aid in any way your very important work. I will begin by stating certain propositions which are fundamental in rescue work, and which are susceptible of ample proof. First. By prostitution is meant mercenary and promiscuous sexual intercourse, without affection and without mutual responsibility. Second. Its object is on one side pecuniary gain, on the other side the exercise of physical lust. It is the conversion of men into brutes and of women into machines.