PROTECTING MILITARY EFFICIENCY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 186, 26 April 1918, Page 7

PROTECTING MILITARY EFFICIENCY

Sir,—Tho Prime Minister intends lo rout Miss flout. Something mom than that is required, according to the evidence. Miss Rout is trying, in what most New Zoalanders will regard as a wrong way, to give our soldiers protection. If she is sent back the problem , still remains. It is many months since a returned soldier shocked me by.saying, compared with the hell of England, Egypt is heaven. He was not referring to "the vast majority of clean Englishmen nnd women, but to tho open and in? sistent temptations to immorality. I did not believe him. Since then I nave read more than enough to canso disquiet. When the editor of a journal like "Land and Water" writes scathingly of the criminal neglect of the .authorities in permitting the waste of military strength through the pollution of soldiers by the harpies of London, it makes one think. When a journal like the "Nineteenth Century" opens its columns to a pipiilar recital, the thinking becomes intouse. Tho police report issned a few months ago was another indictment. It claimed that criticism was not justified, on tho ground that voluntary protection work was being done by the T.M.C.A. Then, again, Lord Northcliffe, in an article on tho Canadian soldiers, complained that Londoners had not seen much of tho Canadian soldioTS, owing to the segregation policy of the Canadian Government. In plain words, the chief city of tho Empire wae too morally dirty, too lacking in any effort of cleansing, for tho soldiers of Canada to bo allowed freedom there. What about our men? Probably tho Minister of Defence can give us assurance that our gallant men are worthily keeping their honour despite overy unchecked wilo of seduction. We ought to be told. Tho Yankees publish the percentage of venereal enses in each and every camp, and tho plain truth has moved public opinion to insist on improvement. It would have tbo sumo effect upon public opinion in this Dominion. I, for 0110, would prefer Sir .Tamps Allen to visit England. Ho has never been afraid to look facts in the face nnd to take action to bar hindrances to efficiency.—! am, etc.. H. P. FRENCH. Waipukurau. [A recent cable message informed us that tho authorities in England wero taking drastic measures to cope with tho evil complained of.T,