Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 172, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1917 — Uncle Sam Intends To Protect Your Soldier Boy from Booze and the "Great Red Plague" [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Uncle Sam Intends To Protect Your Soldier Boy from Booze and the "Great Red Plague"

'| EST the American army of democracy, the j f I 500,000 chosen crusaders, suffer more Iy J casualties from moraj disorders than from the shells of the enemy, there Is to be a military departure in prophylaxis against vice and Intemperance. The wastage of the Spanish-American war was from bad beef instead of bullets, from mosquitoes in place of missiles, from flies and disease rather than from the destructive force of the Spaniards. ‘ Science and sanitation triumphed over the xriosquito. Now it remains for American army moral sanitation to triumph over the ruthless enemies, booze and disease. One can read In the draft law, in the regulations and in the express actions of Secretary of War Baker that he means this army of 500,000 clean young Americans to be the first army that ever took' the field and stayed in the field and re_turned from the field untainted b.v the dual war vices. Secretary Baker is determined that the wounds inflicted upon our army of liberation shall be those inflicted by the central powers, and not those so habitually inflicted by the army upon itself. Recreation is to take the place of Idleness and indulgence. Adjoining rniasmatic swamps of booze and vice are to be drained. Resort' ■wilt be had»in garrison to healthful exercise, to wholesome amusement, to off-hour activities, to athletics, to play and to the devices that healthy men Indulge in at home. Says Surgeon Major D. C. Howard in a recent war department bulletin: “Recreation will be of great value. Idleness Is said to be the mother of lechery. Wholesome amusement's and athletics will make the. garrison so attractive that the soldier will be Inclined to spend his spare time in garrison. No present-day problem in military preventive medicine is of greater importance in relation to the physical efficiency of the army than that of effectual control of venereal disease.” Thus boldly is the issue stated, because thus boldly does the secretary of war propose to meet man’s worst enemy, which Surgeon Major Maus describes as “The Great Red Plague.” Here is the common foe of embattled mankind. Aid and comfort have been given this enemy by the ill-advised and prudish censorship of social science. ~"—' ’ “We want no damaged goods in the American army of democracy,” Capt. E. B. Vedder of the United States Medical corps, declares. And, to show how strictly does General Gorgas propose to make the American expedition as clean as he made Havana and Panama, the Wassermann test, and not mere height and eyesight, is the supreme standard of fitness for this war. This 500,000 army of select men, possessing youth, physique and health, the war department proposes to return to their homes, if they survive mere shot and shell, as fit fathers of a future race. The distressful (many returned men and officers say the disgraceful) social conditions that obtained on the Mexican border will not be repeated at Plattsburg, at Niagara, at Fort Sheridan or In Europe. The El Paso vice barracks, the hideous dives —this nightmare will not be lived through again. It belongs to the typhoid-malaria age. The great American game of baseball will form a vital part in the training of the soldiers of the army of democracy. When young America in civil life is not at work it is at the ball game or at the motion picture show or at play in some form. The American expeditionary soldier will play as fast as he will train for service. This is the dictum of a recreation expert who knows the value of recreation, moral and educational, and who also knows the philosophy Of Messrs. Baker and Gorgas. My authoritative in-, formant continues w r lth an enthusiasm that is infectious : “Good athletes take such pride in their physical fitness (andt good soldiers are necessarily good athletes) that they will not abuse their health by Indulgences. But, aside from personal pride in fitness, play Is in itself the great , prophylaxis against Immoral abuses. “Work 4s a prophylactic agent against disease, but play is its counterpart, if not its peer. Play means health. The play spirit alone Is strictly normal. Play is the preventive against physical and mental and moral breakdown.” The rediscovery of play as a social agent Is one of the most vital discoveries of modern times. Recreation is its organized application. It has been applied educationally. It has been deliberately applied to redeem the city youth from crime and degeneracy. Butiß lent Itself naturally, unconsciously, to the adults, needs in 'the marvelous development of recreations other than booze and vice. Secretary of War Baker is sensitive to modern *■ sociological developments. It went without saying that, whatever might be his merits or demerits In practical military organization, he of all men would bring to the American army of democracy an appreciation of the sociological factors, A system of recreation for the enlisted man' that will supplant booze and vice Will undoubtedly take shape from the earliest mobilization, and will continue to be a safety device for this uniquely protected army on the battle front. One "observes with keen ihteres't that the war department has engaged a number of recreation experts for the supervision of recreation at the large training camps.— There Is here no mere - theoretic attention to play, no paper application of recreation philosophy, no mere philanthropic Interest In the soldier’s Idle hour similar to the Interest which a charitable gentleman would take in supplying tracts to a hospital, or books to an old ladles’ home, or a bat and ball to a nephew. The problem before us is scarcely of a part with sewing society work. However, to avoid any gesture of sensationalism. It is well to follow the plain, serious words of the war department bulletins to Illustrate tlie vice side of the problem. Capt E. B. Vedder of the United States Medical cqrps, in War Department Bulletin No. 8, writes substantially as follows: “Our sick report has been a in that we have had snore men on the sick report because of

venereal diseases than any other army in the world. Tests show that 16 per cent of the recruits are infected on enlistment. Venereal' prophylaxis is the order qf the day.” Statistics are available to those who will not give them specific publicity showing that these social diseases unfitted hundreds of thousands of soldiers at the front from duty on the firing line. More terrible than the bullets of the combatants alike to the invaders and to the invaded were the

ravages of these diseases at Badajoz, in the Peninsular campaign, as to Rome and Naples in the Spanish invasion. More terrible than an army with banners are the camp followers in its wake. These disquieting truths ‘Should be kept hidden, lest, the patriotic spirit be discouraged, provided the United States proposed to take part in the war on this basis, provided the propagation of disease were one of “our objects” in the war, and provided there were no way of protecting our 500,000 chosen soldiers and thereafter the nation from the ravages of a plague. But the war department knows this enemy to be vulnerable, and it proposes to fight it in the open field with social prophylaxis, and to crus’ it. both in the training camp and In its present lair, the trench zones of Europe. But before these preventive recreation plans can be made effective there must be positive exclusion of the unfit. “Weed out the Infected” is the new watchword of the recruiting authorities. Infected recruits, if not detected, will prove an impediment to the army, filling first the hospitals and finally the pension lists. The draft law contains po provision more vital to the security of the nation than section 13, which authorizes Secretary of War Baker to draw a dead line about our military camps for Infection. The Canadian military camps became excursion points for thousands of wives, mothers, sisters and, under this cloak, of others who had no particular qualification except enthusiasm for the soldier and a pronounced reaction toward the uniform. ■ Driven from the mile or more limit, these latter

set up at whatever distance and expressed their patriotism in indulgences for which the war.made a tolerant conscience. And Canadians are among the strictest puritans in the world. By devious pretexts, hundreds of these soldier-smitten women followed the units to Europe. We may quite as well ignore the experiences of the allies in Europe, for our own experiences are rich enough. The government has issued no bulletin showing the number of soldiers incapacitated by disease during the Mexican expedition, but the only available authorities, the individual militiamen and officers, recite a distressing narrative of debauchery on the border. In more than one Instance dives were set up in full view of the officers’ camp, though, of course, outside of the authority of the war department. And to such wretched dens the soldiers resorted because of the utter vacuity of border soldiering and the lack of adequate recreation facilities. It is these experiences which now determine the war department to achieve a new triumph for sanitation by inaugurating a system of thorough prophylaxis, substituting recreation for stupidity, idleness and vice indulgence. The American army of democracy is not to be a disease-infested, boozeinflicted army. It is to triumph over mankind’s worst enemies before it leaves our soil, and it is to carry its triumphs to Europe, there to advertise to the whole world the new American idea in social prophylaxis. To such an army every American mother will beproudtolendbersom—Willlam-J—Black, in New York Tribune Magazine.