and have
known for certain that their power for good was _nil_. If I write
about it now, it is only because I hope that I may be able to make
clearer the causes and processes of such moral deterioration as
exists, and thus to help those who are trying to combat it, to do so
with greater understanding and sympathy.

Even in England most officers, and all privates, are cut off from
their womenfolk. Mothers, sisters, wives, and sweethearts are
inaccessible. All have a certain amount of leisure, and very little
to do with it. All are physically fit and mentally rather unoccupied.
All are living under an unnatural discipline from which, when the
last parade of the day is over, there is a natural reaction. Finally,
wherever there are troops, and especially in war time, there are "bad"
women and weak women. The result is inevitable. A certain number of
both officers and men "go wrong."

Fifteen months ago I was a private quartered in a camp near Aldershot.
After tea it began to get dark. The tent was damp, gloomy, and cold.
The Y.M.C.A. tent and the Canteen tent were crowded. One wandered off
to the town. The various soldiers' clubs were filled and overflowing.
The bars required more cash than one possessed. The result was that
one spent a large part of one's evenings wandering aimlessly about
the streets. Fortunately I discovered an upper room in a Wesleyan
soldiers' home, where there was generally quiet, and an empty chair.
I shall always be grateful to that "home," for the many hours which I
whiled away there with a book and a pipe. But most of us spent a great
deal of our leisure, bored and impecunious, "on the streets"; and if
a fellow ran up against "a bit of skirt," he was generally just in the
mood to follow it wherever it might lead. The moral of this is, double
your subscriptions to the Y.M.C.A., Church huts, soldiers' clubs, or
whatever organization you fancy! You will be helping to combat vice in
the only sensible way.

I don't suppose that the officers were much better off than we were.
Their tents may have been a little lighter and less crowded than ours.
They had a late dinner to occupy part of the long evening. They had
more money to spend, and perhaps more to occupy their minds. But I
fancy that as great a proportion of them as of us took the false step;
and though perhaps when they compared notes their language may have
been less blunt than ours, I am not sure that, for this very reason,
it may not have