MORALS OF LONDON.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 March 1920, Page 5

MORALS OF LONDON.

DISCUSSED BY LEADING DOCTORS, SOCIAL PROBLEM OF THE DATty London, Feb. 12d Doctor Murray Leslie (senior physi- •. cian at the Prince of Wale* General ' e Hospital), lecturing at the London In- ' : stitute of Hygiene, said that the excel* 3. of females of a reproductive age in Great Britain was now over 1,000,000. This' i, was accompanied by smaller excess or L . boy babies, but the male mortality ftl a higher than in any country in Europe. ... The moral effects of the disproportion of the sexes could be seen in the crumbi, ling of the old ethical standards. Much ,1 of the existing unhappiness was due to t. clandestine relations between single girts and married men, and the increased •t- number of postponed marriages due to the high cost of living. Ie The social butterfly, and the scantily e clad, frivolous, jazzing flapper type was , e never so prevalent. They forever j. competing with each other for the team and elusive male. y Dismissing polygamy as impo»»fWe, the lecturer considered that the belt 5 remedy would be to encourage the emi» - n gration of girls to the Dominions, but ' d the Daily Mail points out that Canada ■ e and Australia have suffered losses in men as severely as England. Sir Arbuthnot Lane, in a recent address at the Central Hall, Westminster, a said that doctors realised upfortunately \ e that, in spite of the large amount of \ O moral propaganda which had been * spread broadcast on the community, it is was an indisputable fact that irregular intercourse had greatly increased, and that the average moral code of young , lfl - women had altered very materially for 1C the worse. Ttyit moral degeneration, Is especially among the women, would not disappear for a very long time in spite p of all attempts to educate and improve , a the tone of the community. , e They recognised that the nature of y mankind wax such that irregular into" t. course would continue to take place ill l( j the future, as it had done in the d and that means must be adopted to fceduce infection to a minimum in order - [. that the community should suffer as j. little aa possible, and that these diseases .. should be eliminated. To attempt to terrorise men and wott men by depicting the results of these , r diseases in exaggerated terms was futile, t. and would have aB little effect on then as the fear of an imaginary hell exerted n upon an educated people. Should men lS be impelled to indulge a natural Healthy appetite, which varied widely in intensity in different people, such persons should know the most effectual means i ' y of avoiding infection, and how and trtieh ie they should be employed to the best n advantage. is To many men it would appear Wiser ic that a young man dominated by a powy erful passion should satisfy his appetite n in a normal manner, than that he should • it b.ivo recourse to other more harmful, e and perhaps more dangerous means. As o a nation we were so hopelessly hypocritical that it would be inadvisable to carry this argument to a logical issue, i- In the course of the discussion Mr. H. : it Waneey Bayly said that ho had seen ie artielm in the Press which made him id doubt'whether he could be in a Christian s civilised country. One would sometimes ; if think that one was in the land of fetish worshippers, where a savage god demands propitiation by a sacrifice of n pain and blood. He challenged; the i- ethics of thoso who considered it unwise e to protect the incontinent from disease i- by a widespread knowledge of the value and methods of self-disinfection, o He summed up as follows:—We are in a period of sexual license tfhich will g probably last for some considerable time. Fear of infection is not an efe firient deterrent. It is immoral to withit hold knowledge or prevent such know- < : e ledge being' efficiently applied, n A paper by Miss Ettie Rout, the hon. secretary of the New Zealand Volunteer Sisters, who since early in 1910 has devoted her time to combating venereal ~ disease among the Anzacs, was read- She ' stated that she agreed with the footnote e of the report of Lord Astor'a Interdepartmental Committee, which stated that prophylactic methods were only introduced.tentatively in 1010, tut Until the middle of 1018 were largely neglect l ed, as they were not under adequate a supervision. She considered that until " the middle of 1!)18 the greater proportion of the B.E.F. at home and abroad had no protection at all, except moral prophylaxis, which proved a disastrous failure, i)nd was finally abandoned by the War Office in 1918, in spite of , ecclesiastical opposition.