"This life is not _a life of shame_ in the sense in which this is true in England. Most of these women are prostitutes by caste and _can feel no desire to give it up_," says the Report of the Special Commission of 1893. "They are accepted as safeguards to society, and are not themselves ashamed of their calling," says a high military officer. "They feel no shame about this; they are never recruited from seduced girls, as in England," says another of these high and mighty officers, who know so much better how these girls feel and what they desire than do the poor slaves themselves. To be sure, they sob and cry and petition for deliverance, and protest their outraged feelings against the examinations; but that merely proves what hypocrites they are, and how cleverly they can play a part. "They are as artful as a waggon-load of monkeys," said one Anglo-Indian to us; the "most vicious and degraded of the population," says another. And yet they are, many of them, the offspring of British men. One would imagine them gray-haired in the service of Satan, from these accounts, and yet General Viscount Frankfort states in the Report of the Special Commission of 1893: "It is roughly estimated that 50 per cent. [of the girls of the chakla] are of the age of fourteen to sixteen or so;" and in reply to our evidence as to some of the girls being as young as "from fifteen to sixteen years of age," Major General Sir W. Elles, K.C.B., replies, "The probability is that prostitution is practised at even younger ages than this." In reply to our further statement that many girls are kept at the point of starvation, are always in debt, and cannot escape on this account, even if otherwise the way might be open, Colonel T. G. Crawley, commanding Allahabad District, makes the following calculation (page 360, Departmental Committee Report of 1893):-- "It stands to reason that the women could not be in debt, for if a woman only received six men daily for twenty-three days in a month, at the rate of only four annas [about fourpence] per visit, that would represent thirty-four rupees eight annas, and even allowing one-fourth of this to go to the mahaldarni, rent two rupees, and food at the rate of four annas daily for thirty days, a woman would have fully seventeen rupees [a little more than one pound] a month clear." This for the health of British soldiers and their "future wives" and "unborn offspring" in England! and fifty per cent. of these victims from fourteen to sixteen years of age! And will women physicians be induced to attempt the task of keeping these mere children in health under such conditions?