There was no need to think for
themselves, to act for themselves. They moved in herds dependent on
their leaders. That, too, was a bad training for the individualism of
civil life. It tended to destroy personal initiative and willpower.
Another evil of the abnormal life of war sowed the seeds of insanity
in the brains of men not strong enough to resist it. Sexually they
were starved. For months they lived out of the sight and presence of
women. But they came back into villages or towns where they were
tempted by any poor slut who winked at them and infected them with
illness. Men went to hospital with venereal disease in appalling
numbers. Boys were ruined and poisoned for life. Future generations
will pay the price of war not only in poverty and by the loss of the
unborn children of the boys who died, but by an enfeebled stock and
the heritage of insanity.
The Prime Minister said one day, "The world is suffering from shell-
shock." That was true. But it suffered also from the symptoms of all
that illness which comes from syphilis, whose breeding-ground is war.
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