Statistics compiled on this basis are absolutely worthless for the purposes of argument, and indicate, when so used, a lack of conscience as to exact truthfulness. The official figures of the Indian Army (included in the Report of the Departmental Committee of 1897, strongly advocating a return to licensed prostitution), lie before us. It cannot be said that such a report would be likely to minimize the amount of disease, yet this report, on page 9, distinctly states: "In 1895 an average of 45 men per thousand, or 3,200 in a force of 71,031 British soldiers in India, were constantly in hospital for venereal diseases." Certainly this is sufficiently conclusive. The statement is heralded to the world that all England is becoming infected from the troops of diseased soldiers who return yearly to the home-land. One advocate of licensed prostitution in India says that "thirteen per cent." of the British soldiers are "annually invalided home hopelessly incurable for military purposes." But referring to the same official statistics, embodied in the Departmental Committee's Report, we find that from the year 1887 to the year 1895, 681 men out of the force of 70,000 and more, were invalided home from these diseases, or, on an average, 76 men annually out of the whole force of 70,000; that is, _one-ninth of one per cent._ Such unworthy attempts to frighten an unwilling Christian public into acceding to the return to a system of licensed prostitution, cannot be too strongly condemned. Many well-meaning persons, on the assumption that "figures will not lie," are repeating these exaggerated assertions, and will not take the trouble of investigating for themselves. The Army Sanitary Commission testified in 1894 that "a compulsory Lock Hospital system in India has proved a failure." There could be no higher authority to quote; and the attempt to check diseases of this sort by the compulsory Lock Hospital system had then been carried on for the good part of a century in India. If the case could not be proved by such a prolonged experiment, involving such injustice to women, surely all honest people should be ready to favour its abandonment.