Women should understand that there is always a great deal of venereal disease—­millions of fresh cases every year in the British Empire.  During the war there were about half-a-million fresh infections per annum among the soldiers in the British armies alone—­about two million men infected altogether at the very least.[E] Some were cured, others patched up; some very badly treated; some not treated at all; many demobilised while in an infective condition, and thus liable to come home and sow in the bodies of clean women the seeds of diseases picked up in foreign lands in moments of excitement and folly.  Blame these men if we must, but in all fairness let us ask ourselves:  Who infected them? And the answer is:  Diseased women.

[Footnote E:  The devastation of these diseases among the British armies abroad (in the Rhine, Black Sea, and Palestine areas, etc.) has been much worse since the Armistice than during the war.  Approximately one-fourth (sometimes one-half) of these armies become infected with venereal disease every year.  From 1919 to 1921 somewhat soothing statistics were issued for the army of the Rhine, but these have now been admitted in Parliament to be “quite unreliable” (Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, November 3rd, 1921, p. 1952).  It must be remembered that, owing to the exchange value of the L, the English soldier on the Rhine is now being paid about L8 or L10 per day; that is, he draws a far higher salary than the highest paid German official; hence there is no riotous pleasure, however expensive and extravagant, which he cannot afford.  These conditions do not promote manly virtue or even sexual cleanliness.—­E.A.R]

The venereal diseases are passed on from one sex to the other in a continuous chain, but the chain can be broken at any time by either sex.  And now it is the married women on whom we must rely to see that these infections are stopped.  Leaving women to the chance protection of their partners is demonstrably a failure.  Here is an extract from a letter sent me recently by an old and experienced medical practitioner:—­

     “I have had many women under treatment who have been continually
     re-infected by their husbands.”

Men and women must both seek knowledge and both accept responsibility for the venereal problem.  They must face this problem independently and in co-operation, and above all—­face it honestly.  There is no other way.

It is all very well to say that the man is responsible.  That is only a partial truth.[F] The woman is equally responsible as soon as she is equally well informed.  A woman’s body is her own, and she will never be really free until she knows how to look after it properly.  If she is fit to vote, fit to pay taxes, fit to hold her own estate under the Married Women’s Property Act, why should she not learn to exercise intelligent and responsible control over her own self?