"FULL AT THE TIME."

Taranaki Daily News, 24 March 1916, Page 8

"FULL AT THE TIME."

I HOW SOLDIERS ARE TRAPPED, J WELLIXGTON DOCTOR SPEAKS OUT. 1 A recent issue of the. Wellington Post contained an interesting' interview with a leading. Wellington medical man concerning social diseases, the spread of which is causing grave concern not only in this country, but in England, where the report of a commission on the subject reveals the most serious conditions. The man of medical science says: "We have to face things as they are. and men a? they are not; not as we would have tliem to be; not as so many of them would, I am sure, like themselves, to be able to resist temptation, regarding their bodies as temples for the habitation of those highest and noblest instincts which distinguish the man from the animal. I am sure that fear of the consequences is a powerful deterrent—when the men, the young man, is brought face to face with the consequences.

"No one can do tliat better tlian Ihe medical man speaking as a man to men. straight-out, and in plain, unvarnished English. I feel that much harm lias been done by unqualified 'specialists' in social purity. Things are often put into the minds of boys and young men that were never there before, and incalculable mischief has resulted. That is what I mean by education—education by men qualified to teach the things that every young man ought to know, not only for his own sake, but for the sake of those who come after him and future generations. A great opportunity is afforded to get in some good work—l don't view that it is not already being done—in the territorial and in the expeditionary camps. Here young men (for all must go through at least the military training) could be addressed by medical men, speaking outright, direct, and with force to their hearers, illustrating their lectures .vitli kinematograpli films and lantern elides. They will have prepared young men for what they have already, and will have, to face in Egypt, goiiig there into a veritable sink of iniqnitv, a place where morals as we know them do not exist, and where the danger to health cannot be over-estimated. "Hard indeed must it be for the strongest minded of them to resist temptation. But I don't like talking about our boys at Trentham. I don't for one moment imagine that they are any more prone to vice than men under military training. Possibly not so much. Next to educating the men, particularly the young men. here is scope for a great deal of useful preventive work to be done for them by those in authority. Let me suggest one: There should undoubtedly be a restriction of the facilities and inducements offered to young men to drink to excess. These are unquestionably making indirectly for the spread of contagious disease. Yon know what a young fellow is like when he has a little liquor aboard. He feels 'gay,' and in order to complete his night out he pursues the course so described in the seventh chapter of Proverbs.

"Young men who arc half-intoxicated have no discernment as they would have if sober, and have hut a single purpose in view. The means of their undoing are to hand. Too late they realise with the women ready to pounce upon them, as the sage has put it: 'Her house is the way to hell, going clown to the chambers of death.' Well, ought ive to contribute to this kind of thing by allowing facilities for young fellows to make a regular night of it."their moral tone lowered, and their ability to resist immorality weakened by (kinking. I'm not confining mv remarks to the soldiers. Don't think that; but if the ease with which drink can be obtained leads to this kind of thing, and. tlic spread of these contagious disease, then surely we ought to do .i-hat we can in the way of preventive measures to at least check it.

"I know that from my own early student (lays (o now, young men have said to me, 'Well, doctor, it would not have happened, but I was lull at the time, and—well, yon understand.' Tn other words, had they been sober they would not have gone crooked. Alas! This terrible disease of syphilis does not begin and end in the, one individual. Besides, it is destructive of the mental faculties as well as of the physical. Innumerable eases are in mental hospitals as the result of syphilis. "Gonnorhea is, too, a. most frightful source of sterility in women. These fearful scourges of contagious diseases cannot be dealt with in so delicate and discreet a manner as to take the sting out of them. Here they are—a horrible menace, spyhilis is' transmissalile to the pure and innocent. It must be tackled in a thorough going fashion. It's r,o use blinking the facts. They are all too patent. The press can do a very great deal in conducting a campaign against the spread of contagions diseases in our midst, and demanding that the problem shall be taken in hand without delay."