girls were attracted to it by that glamour which always surrounds the
soldier
During a recent military encampment in Chicago large numbers of young
girls were attracted to it by that glamour which always surrounds the
soldier. On the complaint of several mothers, investigators discovered
that the girls were there without the knowledge of their parents, some
of them having literally climbed out of windows after their parents had
supposed them asleep. A thorough investigation disclosed not only an
enormous increase of business in the restricted districts, but the
downfall of many young girls who had hitherto been thoroughly
respectable and able to resist the ordinary temptations of city life,
but who had completely lost their heads over the glitter of a military
camp. One young girl was seen by an investigator in the late evening
hurrying away from the camp. She was so absorbed in her trouble and so
blinded by her tears that she fairly ran against him and he heard her
praying, as she frantically clutched the beads around her neck, 'Oh,
Mother of God, what have I done! What have I done!' The Chicago
encampment was finally brought under control through the combined
efforts of the park commissioners, the city police, and the military
authorities, but not without a certain resentment from the last toward
'civilian interference.' Such an encampment may be regarded as an
historic survival representing the standing armies sustained in Europe
since the days of the Roman Empire. These large bodies of men, deprived
of domestic life, have always afforded centres in which contempt for the
chastity of women has been fostered. The older centres of militarism
have established prophylactic measures designed to protect the health of
the soldiers, but evince no concern for the fate of the ruined women. It
is a matter of recent history that Josephine Butler and the men and
women associated with her, subjected themselves to unspeakable insult
for eight years before they finally induced the English Parliament to
repeal the infamous Contagious Disease Acts relating to the garrison
towns of Great Britain, through which the government itself not only
permitted vice, but legally provided for it within certain specified
limits.
