It is a hopeful sign that this conception is at last meeting with the discredit which has long been due it. [18] Through the effect on prostitution. A well-known and very intelligent prostitute, with whom this question was recently discussed, rated the liquor traffic first among the influences tending to promote prostitution. The question has occurred to those interested in compulsory military service as a measure of national defense as to whether the mobilization of troops for training will favor the spread of sexual disease. Unfortunately, there are no satisfactory figures for the civil population showing how many persons per thousand per year acquire syphilis or gonorrhea, to be compared with the known figures for the onset of such infections in the army. Arguing from general considerations, however, there seems to be no reason to suppose that the army will show a higher proportion of infections than civilians. In fact, there is every ground for believing that the percentage will be lower, since the army is protected by a fairly efficient and enforceable system of prophylaxis which is taught to the men, and they live, moreover, under a general medical discipline which reduces the risk of infection from other than genital sources to the lowest possible terms. In opposition to the conception that the sexual ideals of the army are low, it may be urged that they are no lower than those of corresponding grades in civil life, and that hard work and rigid discipline have a much better effect in stiffening moral backbone than the laxities of present-day social life. In the last analysis, the making of the moral tone of the army is in our own hands, and by putting into it good blood and high ideals, we can do as much to raise from it a clean manhood as by submitting that same manhood to the temptations and inducements to sexual laxity that it meets on every street corner.