- had to do, to give advice to a man who had once been infected with this disease when it was safe for him to marry. It cannot be a good principle in legislation to treat things as alike, which in their most characteristic features are essentially unlike.
Are we then to fold our hands in despair and do nothing in the face of the terrible state of things brought out by the Government statistics? I would answer, by no means. We who oppose legislation on the lines of the C. D. Acts, hold that former Governments and the English people have incurred very grave responsibility in this matter, that their mistaken legislation has encouraged immorality, and therefore promoted the ensuing disease. We have sown to the flesh and are of the flesh reaping corruption. The evil is a moral as well as a physical evil, and must be fought by moral as well as by physical weapons.
We have the right to ask what has been done already to combat this evil by moral means? One eminent Indian authority, Sir William Hunter, says that everything has been done that can possibly be done through moral agencies. Another eminent Indian authority, Mrs. Steel, the authoress, says that nothing at all has been done to raise the moral condition of the Army. In this conflict of evidence by experts, we shall perhaps find the truth midway between the two. Something has been done, but not half enough. To those who say that everything has been done that can be done, I should like to ask this one question. What would the condition of our Universities be in the matter of sexual morality if the authorities at Oxford and Cambridge had interpreted their duty to the undergraduates in the sense of General Chapman's circular? The mere suggestion is so frightful that it is unnecessary to dwell upon it.
But we have the right to ask that the precautions taken in the Universities to protect young men just leaving school from becoming slaves to their own worst instincts, should be extended to the lads, who need it quite as much, who form our Army in India. Bad women ought to be kept out of the Cantonments; bad houses ought to be put out of bounds. It ought to be the study of the military authorities to make the practice of vice physically difficult as well as morally repulsive. There will always be some failures, no doubt, whatever system is adopted, whether in the Army or at Universities. But the Universities have arrived at a system in which at any rate it is not difficult for a well-disposed lad to lead a pure life. I am afraid as much as that cannot be said of the Army in India.
It is only within the last forty or fifty years that the masters of our great public schools have applied themselves in earnest to endeavouring to cope with moral evils in schools, somewhat similar in their nature to those we are now considering. Formerly even the very best men among schoolmasters looked upon the evil as inevitable, and took no active measures for controlling and preventing it. Now it is not too much to say that every schoolmaster with any real interest in his profession is vividly conscious of this evil as an evil, and frames a very large part of the discipline, games, mental work and domestic arrangements of his school with a view of laying low the beast, and raising the higher qualities in his boys.
There is nothing Utopian in asking that the officers of the Army should approach the subject we are discussing in the same spirit. In the Life of the Master of Balliol there is a letter from him to Lord Lansdowne, in which he says he looks upon the Army as a great public school, and the Army Reorganisation Bill (1872) as a great measure of education. He says that our military arrangements ought to be made with the view of improving the moral and physical conditions of the men who pass through the Army, so that on leaving the service they may raise the character and physique of the whole people. This was in 1872, twenty-five years
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- had to do, to give advice to a man who had once been in- fected with this disease when it was safe for him to marry. It cannot be a good principle in legislation to treat things as alike, which in their most characteristic features are essentially unlike.
Are we then to fold our hands in despair and do nothing in the face of the terrible state of things brought out by the Government statistics? I would answer, by no means. We who oppose legislation on the lines of the C. D. Acts, hold that former Governments and the English people have incurred very grave responsibility in this matter, that their mistaken legislation has encouraged immorality, and there- fore promoted the ensuing disease. We have sown to the flesh and are of the flesh reaping corruption. The evil is a moral as well as a physical evil, and must be fought by moral as well as by physical weapons. We have the right to ask what has been done already to combat this evil by inoral means? One eminent Indian authority, Sir William Hunter, says that everything has been done that can possi- bly be done through moral agencies. Another eminent Indian authority, Mrs. Steel, the authoress, says that nothing at all has been done to raise the moral condition of the Army. In this conflict of evidence by experts, we shall perhaps find the truth midway between the two. Something has been done, but not half enough. To those who say that everything has been done that can be done, I should like to ask this one question. What would the condition of our Universities be in the matter of sexual morality if the authorities at Oxford and Cambridge had interpreted their duty to the undergraduates in the sense of General Chap- man's circular? The mere suggestion is so frightful that it is unnecessary to dwell upon it. But we have the right to ask that the precautions taken in the Universities to protect young men just leaving school from becoming slaves to their own worst instincts, should be extended to
17
the lads, who need it quite as much, who form our Army in India. Bad women ought to be kept out of the Can- tonments; bad houses ought to be put out of bounds. It ought to be the study of the military authorities to make the practice of vice physically difficult as well as morally repulsive. There will always be some failures, no doubt, whatever system is adopted, whether in the Army or at Universities. But the Universities have arrived at a sys- tem in which at any rate it is not difficult for a well dis- posed lad to lead a pure life. I am afraid as much as that cannot be said of the Army in India.
It is only within the last forty or fifty years that the masters of our great public schools have applied themselves in earnest to endeavouring to cope with moral evils in schools, somewhat similar in their nature to those we are now considering. Formerly even the very best men among schoolmasters looked upon the evil as inevitable, and took no active measures for controlling and preventing it. Now it is not too much to say that every schoolmaster with any real interest in his profession is vividly conscious of this evil as an evil, and frames a very large part of the dis- cipline, games, mental work and domestic arrangements of his school with a view of laying low the beast, and raising the higher qualities in his boys. There is nothing Utopian in asking that the officers of the Army should approach the subject we are discussing in the same spirit. In the Life of the Master of Balliol there is a letter from him to Lord Lansdowne, in which he says he looks upon the Army as a great public school, and the Army Reorgani sation Bill (1872) as a great measure of education. He says that our military arrangements ought to be made with the view of improving the moral and physical conditions of the men who pass through the Army, so that on leaving the service they may raise the character and physique of he whole people. This was in 1972, twenty-five years
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