WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 69, 13 June 1927, Page 7

WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC

INTERNATIONAL INFAMY GIRLS LURED INTO VICE A thrill of horror ran through the correspondents at Geneva at the revelations in the report of the League of Nations’ Commission on the white slave traffic. Great Britain and the United States are not included in the report, which has been described as “one of the most terrible indictments against humanity ever compiled.” The chiefly surprising feature is that certain among the so-called civilised nations are said to countenance, if they do not openly connive at, the deliberate and profitable barter in agony and shame. The names cf these nations are not divulged, nnd the London “Times” is moved by the appalling iniquity of the international trade in women to urge the League to “pursue the destruction of this traffic to the end,’ 'and not to conceal, as it has concealed, the names of those countries which countenance the evil, including those which, although signatories to the international conventions for its suppression, have not acted up to their obligations. Commercialised Vice Although according to the report, international conventions to deal with the evil have succeeded in causing the traffic to be “probably less extensive than it used to be,” it is admitted that it is still “extensive.” It is said to go outward from Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Rumania, Spain and Turkey to Argentine, Brazil, Mexico, Panama, Uruguay, Egypt and North Africa. Four classes profit from the trade, while the victim receives ill treatment, virtual slavery, and, in the end, a dishonoured grave in an alien land. How extensive the traffic is may be surmised from the fact that 5,000 persons interested in commercialised -vice were interviewed by the investigators. From piecemeal quotations from the report, which was “released” a little at a time, we learn, for instance, that in Mexico the traffic is real slavery, agents buying and selling women and making a profit on every transaction. Proprietors of tolerated vice in Uruguary import their victims wholesale from Europe. the victims coming mainly from cabarets in Hungary, Austria and Germany. The movements of tourists is also followed. Women are imported into Egypt, Tunis and Algiers for the winter season, and then are sent elsewhere for the summer. Stark tragedy stares at us from the page which reports that a troupe of 15 girls, all under age, were taken by a German woman to dance in an Athens cabaret. Seven of them were sent home in a “pitiable condition,” to relate how they were forced into vice to save themselves from starvation. Another troupe of four girls was sent to Buenos Aires and was there stranded. One committed suicide, another attempted suicide to save herself from starvation, a third disappeared, and a fourth accepted the situation forced on her. Bogus Theatrical Agents The commission reports evidence that white slave procurers, who pose as theatrical agents, have offices in Belgrade, Berlin, Bucharest, Budapest, Marseilles, Paris, Vienna and Zagreb. Portugal is cited as one of the worst countries in respect to the traffic. There those given over to commer-

cialised vice range in age from 16 to 20. Many snares are laid to entrap unwary girls and women. Bogus matrimonial agencies and bogus employment agencies bait many victims. The report invites Governments to defend their nationals by providing that girls under a certain age should not be permitted to accept engagements to go abroad without official examination and approval of the conditions required by the employing agency. Governments also are reminded that it is their duty to see that the places of entertainment to which foreign entertainers and brought are properly conducted.