During the war a disloyal faction in every Dominion endeavoured to prevent the sending of help to the Mother Country.  A principal cry of this faction was, “Do not let us send our clean lads to that cesspool, England.”  England is more than the world-cesspool.  Since Englishmen are the greatest travellers, she has been the principal source of infection for the world.  At one time during the war the Australasian Governments threatened to withdraw their forces unless measures were taken to protect them.

When the German offensive was impending a sanitary method was published, so effective that the venereal rate was reduced from 92 to 15 per thousand per annum.  The Government proposed to bring the method into general use in the Army, but was prevented by influences which preferred to see the country poisoned and the British Army defeated.  While the opponents of sanitation sat snugly at home hundreds of thousands of British soldiers were killed or maimed, enormous material was lost with territory which other hundreds of thousands of brave men had died to win, the war was prolonged, thousands of millions were added to the National Debt, and half trained boys and elderly fathers of families were hurried into the firing line.  At that time there were in hospitals or in depots, convalescent from venereal disease, enough fully-trained allied soldiers to furnish, not an army corps but a great army, complete almost from G.O.C. to trumpeter.

Fear of disease does not prevent immorality, as may be judged from the immense prevalence of venereal disorders.  But it does drive baser characters to the pursuit and seduction of “decent” girls.  In this way nearly all prostitutes begin their careers.  Prostitutes are much more diseased than other women, who, though often diseased, are seldom suspected of disease.  Yet, since it has been found statistically that three out of four men acquire their maladies from amateurs, it is manifest that prostitutes only hang on the fringe of a vaster immorality.  Men, who know more of these diseases than women, are, on the average, much less chaste.  Medical students who know most are not more moral than other men.  Plainly venereal diseases are causes, not preventives, of immorality.  Nothing, therefore, is gained from their prevalence except a flood of death, disability, and misery, which falls alike on the just and unjust.

During the war Sir Archdall Reid, employing very simple means, reduced the incidence of disease among the large body of troops in his charge almost to the vanishing point.  He could not make them more moral, he did not make them less moral, but at any rate he preserved their services for the country in its hour of need.  And he preserved their future wives and children from unmerited death and suffering.  Other doctors were equally successful.  The town authorities of Portsmouth and many other boroughs are about to employ these methods for the prevention of disease among the civil population.  This book describes them and tells the story of the fight against a wicked and cruel fanaticism.  Its policy is endorsed by many of the leading men and women in the Kingdom—­members of both Houses of Parliament, town authorities, doctors, authors, sociologists and others.