We have referred to the discrepancies between the statements of Lord Roberts and of General Chapman; between Lord Roberts’ first attempt to discredit our evidence and subsequent admission of its truth; between the records that had been kept at the Lock Hospitals which we visited in India and the statements sent home by the Special Commission. All these things must tend to weaken the faith of the public in Anglo-Indian representations. They all accord in spirit with the gross exaggerations which have been put forth, as though a veritable scourge of such diseases was at the door of England. As to the prevalence of disease, “Between fifty and sixty per cent. of our Indian army,” is found to be, in actual fact, only four and one-half per cent. (see page 69), and “Thirteen per cent. annually invalided home hopelessly incurable,” is found to be, in actual fact, only one-ninth of one per cent.

“Our power is being sapped—our race defiled—and we are forced to ask ourselves if no means can be devised of stopping so gigantic an infliction.” What does this mean in exact figures? How “gigantic” in reality is this infliction? The official figures of the very document which was meant to originate the alarm, the Report of the Departmental Committee of 1897 shall testify. The latest year reported in this document is 1895, and as the law which effectually forbade the compulsory examination of women was passed on February 8, 1895, the figures show the result only of less than eleven months covering the existence of that law. Out of a force of 71,031 soldiers in India nineteen more men were sent home to England, “hopelessly incurable” from vice, in 1895 than in the year 1894. Nineteen cases represent the size of this “gigantic infliction” which has been made the occasion of raising such a cry of alarm, and a demand for the return to licensed prostitution and the re-enslavement of thousands of native women by compulsory examination measures.

In the year 1894, 111 men were sent home invalided from this cause, and in 1895, 130 men were sent home—an increase of nineteen cases. We do not wish to minimize the evil of even these few cases; but is a decent nation prepared to hazard an attempt to purchase immunity from disease by plunging into brazen defiance of God’s seventh commandment? What about the “gigantic [immoral] infliction” of the atheistic assumption that chastity is a sanitary failure, and fornication a necessity? There is no comparison between the “gigantic infliction” upon England of a teaching to defy God’s commandments in the fancied interests of physical health, and the presence of nineteen additional diseased soldiers in a population of thirty-five millions.

But if we continue the study of the table of statistics found on page 9 of the Report referred to, we find that eighty-four more men were sent home to England in 1894 for diseases due to vice, than during the previous year, 1893. If the increase of disease in 1895 over 1894 is to be attributed to the Amendment Act of 1895, to what shall we attribute the much more pronounced increase of 1894 over 1893? Again, there were forty more men sent home invalided in 1891 than in 1890; and forty-three more sent home in 1888 than in 1887, and none of these years were under the Amendment Act of 1895. Therefore it is proved that variations and increases have taken place that have had nothing to do with the Amendment Act of 1895, which, when it serves the object of advocates of licensed vice, is held wholly responsible for the insignificant variation of an increase of nineteen cases. In view of these facts, we must declare our solemn conviction that the agitation for a return to legalized prostitution in India is not due to any feeling of alarm on account of the spread of contagion in the case of the originators of the agitation, but that an attempt is being made to frighten an unwilling Christian public into a reluctant consent to return to a system which regards the whoremonger as a necessity, the commandments of God a farce, and the slave trade in women an important part of the business of the State.

Life in India does not tend to the elevation of British morals, and this not because of the climate, as some contend. The industrial conditions are all against good morals, and are closely analogous to the conditions that prevailed in the Southern States of America before the Civil War. Wages are so low in India as to constitute the native the virtual slave of the Anglo-Saxon. By means of the pitiful wages paid for work, not one-half the comfort is provided by white masters to Indian servants that was secured to the black men in America, by the few of those owners of slaves who were really humane. The very fact that the slave was a rather scarce article and a good price paid for him in America, made it to the interest of his owner to look after his health and comfort to a certain extent. We are not defending slavery—it is an abomination in the sight of God, whether it exists under the disguise of abnormally low wages or shows itself openly; and slavery is always a greater moral curse to the master than to the oppressed. England virtually owns a whole nation of slaves in her control of India, and the effect of this fact upon the morals of that country will depend wholly upon whether she rules to redeem her subjects or to enrich herself. The worst feature of all in slavery is the appropriation of women by their masters. And this form of villainy is always excusing itself by slandering the oppressed women.

“This life is not a life of shame in the sense in which this is true in England. Most of these women are prostitutes by caste and can feel no desire to give it up,” says the Report of the Special Commission of 1893. “They are accepted as safeguards to society, and are not themselves ashamed of their calling,” says a high military officer. “They feel no shame about this; they are never recruited from seduced girls, as in England,” says another of these high and mighty officers, who know so much better how these girls feel and what they desire than do the poor slaves themselves. To be sure, they sob and cry and petition for deliverance, and protest their outraged feelings against the examinations; but that merely proves what hypocrites they are, and how cleverly they can play a part. “They are as artful as a waggon-load of monkeys,” said one Anglo-Indian to us; the “most vicious and degraded of the population,” says another. And yet they are, many of them, the offspring of British men. One would imagine them gray-haired in the service of Satan, from these accounts, and yet General Viscount Frankfort states in the Report of the Special Commission of 1893: “It is roughly estimated that 50 per cent. [of the girls of the chakla] are of the age of fourteen to sixteen or so;” and in reply to our evidence as to some of the girls being as young as “from fifteen to sixteen years of age,” Major General Sir W. Elles, K.C.B., replies, “The probability is that prostitution is practised at even younger ages than this.” In reply to our further statement that many girls are kept at the point of starvation, are always in debt, and cannot escape on this account, even if otherwise the way might be open, Colonel T. G. Crawley, commanding Allahabad District, makes the following calculation (page 360, Departmental Committee Report of 1893):—

“It stands to reason that the women could not be in debt, for if a woman only received six men daily for twenty-three days in a month, at the rate of only four annas [about fourpence] per visit, that would represent thirty-four rupees eight annas, and even allowing one-fourth of this to go to the mahaldarni, rent two rupees, and food at the rate of four annas daily for thirty days, a woman would have fully seventeen rupees [a little more than one pound] a month clear.”

This for the health of British soldiers and their “future wives” and “unborn offspring” in England! and fifty per cent. of these victims from fourteen to sixteen years of age! And will women physicians be induced to attempt the task of keeping these mere children in health under such conditions?

Anglo-Indian sentiment would not long content itself with the loss of its highly prized C.D. Acts. The military officials had professed to abrogate them when they hid them away under the cloak of the Indian Cantonment Acts, and then again when they hid them under the cloak of the Cantonments Act of 1889; but they were at last fairly caught by the Cantonments Act Amendment Act of 1895, which tore away from them the pretence of “only treating this as any other contagious disease.”

Regulation had been in operation in India, in one form or another, for the largest part of a century, and statistics show a steady increase of disease, with slight variations, during all that time. And the Army Sanitary Commission, the highest British medical authority, had in 1894 pronounced this prolonged experiment with licensed vice a failure, in the following unequivocal language:—

“The facts, so far as we can ascertain them, lead us to the conclusion that a compulsory Lock Hospital system in India has proved a failure, and that its re-institution cannot consequently be advocated on sanitary grounds. In stating this conclusion, we may add that we are merely repeating the opinions which the Army Sanitary Commission have uniformly held, that venereal diseases in the army of India could not be repressed by such restrictive measures, and in support of this statement, we may refer to the Memoranda on the Indian Sanitary Reports which have issued from this office for many years.”

Yet a Departmental Committee was secured in November, 1896, by Anglo-Indian influence brought to bear upon the Government, to examine into the matter and report on the prevalence of diseases due to vice; and it reported, as was expected, in favour of a return to the system of legalized vice. The Departmental Committee reported at the beginning of the year 1897, on statistics no later than the year 1895. Now the Cantonments Act Amendment Act became a law in India, February 8, 1895, and how much time elapsed before this Amendment Act came into practical operation remains yet to be shown; yet an attempt is made to show that incalculable mischief has been done during these eleven months of the actual existence of the law which abolished licensed prostitution. The official statistics of which they make use do not at all justify the calculations and conclusions they have drawn therefrom.

At about the time of the report of the Departmental Committee, there was formed in England an association with the object of securing the re-establishment of legalized vice in India. The names of high British military officials make up its membership list, in large part. The association printed a pamphlet, based upon the Departmental Committee’s Report in favour of a return to the old conditions, a Report that was calculated to frighten the public, if possible, into acceding to their demands, on the supposition that a fearful scourge was upon them, and that no time was to be lost in getting it under check. Then Lord George Hamilton, on March 26, 1897, sent a dispatch to the Government of India, calling attention to the Report of the Departmental Committee, and ordering stricter measures for the suppression of diseases due to vice, but adding: “There must be no provision of women, … no registration, … no compulsory examination of women,” etc., but urging that it was “imperatively necessary that this disease should not be exempted from the measures adopted to prevent the spread of other contagious diseases.” “If there be any compulsion, it is precisely of the same kind as that which has been accepted as necessary and enforced without any objection in the case of diphtheria or typhoid fever.”

Now the first quotation given effectually contradicts the second, at the point of the compulsory examination of women; and such instructions were, in fact, a virtual order to repeal the Amendment Act of 1895, very covertly expressed, and so it was recognised immediately by the British Committee for the Abolition of State Regulated Vice, which promptly issued a memorial on the subject addressed to Lord George Hamilton, Secretary of State for India.[9]

On April 21, 1897, there appeared in the London Times part of a letter from Lady Henry Somerset to Lord George Hamilton, in which she “expresses gratification at finding incorporated in a document of such importance a statement of inspiring and controlling principles.” She notes with satisfaction the “inclusion of this disease among other contagious diseases,” as the “only rational and scientific principle on which its eradication can be attempted.” “It is not however, proposed to carry out this principle to its full logical result; and herein lies the point on which she finds herself at issue with Lord George Hamilton.” At the end of the letter is affixed the system of legislation best suited to the end, in the opinion of Lady Henry Somerset, and it will be seen at a glance that her propositions would indeed carry out the principle to its full, logical end. A special importance attaches itself to these propositions, because of the strategic position held by Lady Henry Somerset as president of the British Women’s Temperance Association of England, and first vice-president of the World’s W.C.T.U., and her action put her in absolute opposition to the purity department of both those societies.

The scheme proposed by Lady Henry Somerset is here given in her own words:

“1. A quarter of each Cantonment should be reserved for such women as are permitted to remain in camp, and all such women should be compelled to remain in houses or rooms specifically reserved to each by a registered number. The admission of men to this quarter should be strictly supervised.

“2. No woman should be allowed to remain in this quarter unless periodically examined by properly qualified women doctors.

“3. No soldier should be allowed to enter this quarter without having undergone a like examination and having the same report.

“4. A register should be kept recording the name of each soldier entering the quarter, the number of the house to which he goes, and the date of such entry.

“5. On any woman being found to be diseased in this quarter, or on any soldier found to be suffering in like manner, all such persons that the registered visits show to have rendered themselves liable to contagion should be put in quarantine until such time as their immunity can be verified.

“6. All consorting with women outside this quarter should render the offender liable to severe penalty.”[10]

The Shield, official organ of the British Committee for the Abolition of State Regulated Vice, in its issue of May, 1897, comments as follows upon this scheme:

“The suggestions above quoted embody the most complete State Regulation of prostitution which we have ever seen described, in its baldest and most absolute form, and imply the most complete identification of the State with the purely animal side of the matter which has ever been proposed. They seem to emanate from a mind influenced for the time solely by the idea of equality between man and woman, to the exclusion of other considerations. Such proposals seem indeed to make the sexes equal, but it is an equality of unspeakable degradation for both.”

On May 14 and 17 occurred a debate in the House of Lords on the question of a return to legalized prostitution in India, in which reference was made to Lady Henry Somerset’s letter in The Times, and to another memorial which was shortly “to be made public,” and which was signed by a very large number of ladies, as an indication that women were no longer, as formerly, opposed to the system of State Regulation of Vice.[11]

On May 25 The Times published the text of this Memorial, which is signed by ladies of the aristocracy, together with a few other prominent women, numbering in all one hundred and twenty-three.

The Government of India proceeded at once to repeal the Cantonments Act Amendment Act of 1895, in the Viceregal Council held at Simla July 8, which action had received the approval of Lord George Hamilton by telegram, July 6, 1897. Since that day, therefore, the military authorities have been set free to return to the establishment of brothel slavery, the registration and compulsory examination of women, the employment of procuresses, and all the infamies which we have described as existing when we visited India in 1892.

Meanwhile, the women of Great Britain have arisen in mighty protest, and a Memorial signed by 61,437 women of the United Kingdom, addressed to Lord George Hamilton, as representative of Her Majesty’s Government, was presented at the India Office on Saturday, July 31, 1897, as follows:

“It declares the unaltered and unalterable hostility of the signatories to every form of State Regulation of Immorality, whether embodied in the system which was known as the Contagious Diseases Acts or in any other form, including the slightly modified and more subtle garb of certain Indian Cantonment rules.

“It objects to the principle of all such legislation, a principle based on the assumption of the necessity of vice. It opposes the system in all its forms, because it inevitably becomes, in regard to women, an engine of the most shameful oppression, removing the guarantees of personal liberty which the law has established, and putting their reputation, their freedom, and their persons absolutely in the power of the police; while in respect to those women who come immediately under its action, it cruelly violates the feelings of those whose sense of shame is not wholly lost, and further brutalizes even the most abandoned.

“The Memorialists, while deploring the existence of disease and favourable to moral methods of diminishing it, urge that no permanent diminution of disease will ever be attained by measures which do not strike primarily at the vice itself, and express the hope that the Government of our country will be withheld from the crime of ever again entering into any compact with evil by its attempted regulation.”

We have been deeply impressed with the thought that, in our search for the cause of the present moral confusion, we need to go further back than the influence of high-placed military officers and ladies of the aristocracy. There have arisen occasions in the past when the Christian public have been able to successfully resist the invasions of materialistic and immoral counsels, although they were advocated by the rich and mighty. Only the blind can be led by the blind: those who have clear vision will not follow such leadership. Whence this far-reaching influence, then, which has blinded the eyes of so many? Alas! these are the days of a paralysed faith, and faith is as indispensable a faculty of the human mind as is reason.

The re-enthronement of faith is the need of the hour. Science we have, and scholarship: but hesitancy and doubt rule the scientific spirit, and timidity is the vice of the scholar. The soldier who hesitates and doubts and grows timid will not win a single battle. His must be the prophetic spirit of faith which “laughs at impossibilities, and cries, It shall be done.” But the Church militant has been ridiculed out of the warrior spirit, and has laid aside its mightiest weapon, faith; and as to leadership, many are pointing to science and scholarship and crying, “These be thy gods, O Israel!” Science and scholarship have their place and their power, but they are not the Christian’s mightiest weapons. Learning cannot take the place of the inspiration of faith; statistics can never teach morals as forcibly as “Thus saith the Lord.” More than this: statistics can never overturn the “Thou shalt not” of an Almighty God.

David has essayed to go forth to meet Goliath, well loaded down with Saul’s armour, and David will meet with the defeat he deserves if he does not repent of the folly of matching such weapons against one who defies the armies of the living God. The warfare is a spiritual not a carnal one. What wonder that with such weapons courage has failed, the citadel is imperilled, and “counsels of despair” are urged. But these shall not prevail. That unrepentant soul shall not go unpunished by the wrath of a just God, who enters into complicity with the vice of fornication by consenting to the proposal for its State management.

But can this vice ever be actually exterminated? Probably never entirely by human law; but neither can stealing, so far as we are able to judge. The vice of stealing is likely to continue so long as the city of London exists, in spite of the most excellent human laws. Shall we then license stealing? No one who has a purse to be protected would advocate such rash legislation.

A conclusive answer to the plea of “a necessary evil” has been already given by our Judge. Looking upon the vices of those about Him, and the inevitable crop of increasing vice, with its attendant misery, to which his people were tending, He cried: “It must needs be that offences come; but,” He added, “woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” And shall we listen to proposals to set aside the sentence of Divine Justice for the tradition of men, and embody in human legislation the teaching, “It must needs be that offences come; but peace to that man by whom the offence cometh”? Let us rather, answer every specious array of misleading statistics, every false doctrine of medicine, every fresh cry of alarm, every blasphemous utterance against Christ’s sufficient power to redeem, every infidel attack upon the sanctity of God’s holy law, with the inexorable “Thou shalt not” of God’s eternal commandment.

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