reports have a natural tendency to become exaggerated. I do not consider
that returned Maori soldiers, owing to the treatment they received
before being discharged from the service, have been a factor in the
introduction of the disease amongst the settlements. If they have in
some areas, it has been from fresh infection, which their experience of
prostitution in Egypt and Europe has made them more liable to acquire
from professional and amateur prostitutes in towns. At the same time,
the experience of returned soldiers as to the value of treatment makes
them more likely to seek such aid."

(E.) _Death-certificates._

There are no trustworthy statistics in any part of the British Empire of
the deaths due to venereal disease. Many persons die from illnesses
which result from an initial syphilis contracted perhaps many years
prior to death. It is well known that medical practitioners, from a
laudable desire to spare the feelings of relatives, refrain from stating
the primary cause of death in such cases, and merely enter the secondary
or proximate cause. For the same reason, the statistics regarding deaths
due to alcoholism, and perhaps in a less degree some other factors in
the mortality returns, are incomplete and consequently useless.

Both the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases and the Birth-rate
Commission recommended that the medical attendant should issue two
certificates--one, which would be a simple certificate of death, to be
handed to the relatives, and the other, a confidential certificate
giving the primary cause of death, which would be transmitted to the
Registrar.

The Registrar-General for New Zealand, Mr. W.W. Cook, in his evidence in