population of the United Kingdom is now urban, and gonorrhoea is six or
seven times as prevalent as syphilis. It follows that at least every other
person in the Kingdom has suffered from venereal disease. Probably not a
family has escaped infection. In proportion to its prevalence syphilis is
not very deadly, yet it has been reckoned as the fourth killing disease.
The victims of gonorrhoea are incalculable. Venereal diseases fill our
hospitals, asylums, and workhouses. They are the principal causes of heart
disease, apoplexy, paralysis, insanity, blindness in children, and of that
life of sterility and pain to which so many women are condemned. It is
said that chastity is the only real safeguard against venereal disease.
But this is always said by people who have never stirred a finger to teach
chastity, but who have only preached it. At any time there are at least a
million of perfectly innocent sufferers, principally women and children,
in the United Kingdom.

During the war a disloyal faction in every Dominion endeavoured to prevent
the sending of help to the Mother Country. A principal cry of this faction
was, "Do not let us send our clean lads to that cesspool, England."
England is more than the world-cesspool. Since Englishmen are the greatest
travellers, she has been the principal source of infection for the world.
At one time during the war the Australasian Governments threatened to
withdraw their forces unless measures were taken to protect them.

When the German offensive was impending a sanitary method was published,
so effective that the venereal rate was reduced from 92 to 15 per thousand
per annum. The Government proposed to bring the method into general use in
the Army, but was prevented by influences which preferred to see the
country poisoned and the British Army defeated. While the opponents of
sanitation sat snugly at home hundreds of thousands of British soldiers
were killed or maimed, enormous material was lost with territory which