“I know of a hospital for venereal cases which it was found
necessary to expand from its normal accommodation for 500 or 600 up
to 2,000 cases, and they are continually full. It is a British
hospital in France. A figure I should like to submit to challenge is
that during the course of the war between 40,000 and 50,000 cases of
syphilis have passed through our hospitals in France. When you come
to gonorrhœa, the figure given me which covers that is between
150,000 and 200,000 cases.”
_Captain Guest in Parliament, April 23, 1917_
“Every Canadian soldier who comes to this country arrives here not
only a first-class specimen of a fine soldier, but as clean-limbed
and as clean a man as the Creator Himself could create. The fact
that in one only of the three Canadian camps in this country 7,000
of these clean Canadian boys went through the hospital for venereal
disease in fourteen months is not only a great discredit to any
Government in this country but has an effect in Canada which I can
assure the House does not make for a better feeling with the Home
Country, and does not make for what we all desire—Imperial Unity.”
_Colonel Sir Hamar Greenwood in Parliament, April 23, 1917_
Those are unchallenged statements made in the House of Commons itself;
they stand as a terrible indictment of this disease, and it is not to be
denied that this evil could never have reached its present frightful
proportions if Parliament had followed the King. Let us look at a few
examples of the ravages of this vice allied so closely to the
public-house.
It is not possible to tell the whole truth about drink; the language
in which it must be written would be offensive in a civilised
country. It must be said, simply, that soldiers in England have been
court-martialled for having been influenced by drink to commit
unspeakable offences against animals.
_Facts in Records of Court-Martials_
A special constable in a harlot-haunted district in London describes
how these harpies carry off lonely soldiers to their rooms, make
them drunk, and finally innoculate them, as likely as not, with
disease. Is it not possible to hold in check these women who prey
upon and poison our soldiers? asks Sir Conan Doyle.
_Letter in the “Times”_
One of the hot-beds of venereal disease to which drink leads our
soldiers, was kept by an Austrian woman in Lambeth, who was
receiving 15_s._ a week from the Austrian Government in April 1916,
and used to lure our soldiers when weakened by drink. All the men
seen to enter this house were either soldiers or sailors.
_Police Records of Lambeth_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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