BRITAIN'S SHAME.

White Ribbon, Volume 23, Issue 266, 18 August 1917, Page 15

BRITAIN'S SHAME.

“The Women’s Dreadnought” publishes two stories, on good authority, as to how the Naval and Military Authorities are encouraging our soldiers and sailors to lead immoral lives. A young naval officer states that when the men go on leave the ship’s doctor stands on the gangway calling out to them that if any of them go with women whilst they are ashore, they must come to him for treatment when they return, or there will be trouble. A young officer in a Canadian regiment stated that when he first went on leave in England he was supplied with preventative? aga nst venereal disease. He refused them indignantly, but his superior told him with a smile that he must take them. Dr. Flanders, a leading Canadian, asks: “Has England no better reward for the mothers of this Dominion who have given her their sons than to return them to their homes victims of inebriety manufactured in England? Why should Canada deny herself in the practice of a steadily increasing economy, that food supplies may be contributed to the feeding of our soldiers, while England allows the liquor trade to destroy hundreds of thousands of bushels of grain in the manufacture of alcoholic beverages, which, on the authority of science, have little or no feeding force? The bungling of a War Office not train'd to the exigencies of war Canada is prepared to bear with set teeth ; but when our men return wounded from the Front, with whispers of what might or might not have been if only their brave officers had been truly themselves, our women ask their pastors touch ng the moral obligation involved in the reckless exposure of their loved one to unnecessary and criminal blundering in the hour of great danger.”