CURRENT LITERATURE
OUR readers will remember how vice at Singapore was lately the cause of some courageous letters which we felt bound to publish on public grounds in spite of the repulsive nature of the subject. An Ordinance for the prevention of disease was drafted a year ago for the Government of Singapore on the old lines of strict official control of vice by licensing and registra- tion of women and houses, medical examination, hospitals to be provided for women under treatment and so on. This draft was referred to the new Committee on Hygiene, which has reported upon it to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
Those who can overcome their repugnance or whose duty it is to study this important subject will find the Report full of interest. It condemns the draft ordinance unsparingly. It contains the most concise condemnation of 'State regulation and the concomitant commercializing of vice that we have yet seen. It emphasizes, as the League of Nations Committee did, the inevitable, though hidden, connexion that arises with traffic in girls, where no one can doubt the duty of Govern- ments to step in because the shadowy line between vice and crime is there definitely passed. We cannot here discuss that old problem of the function of government. The committee considered the moral and religious side beyond their scope, but plainly realized that fundamentally it is a moral rather than simply a medical matter, and the Report is fully as high- minded as could be asked for from a departmental committee ; the more honour to the six medical members, for it is often said that doctors take a basely materialistic view of these questions, such a view as the framers of the draft Ordinance took. Singapore has its own peculiar difficulties, for which the committee urges particular remedies of a social nature, but in general they recommend among other things that instead of fixing upon a certain number of women, which can never be done with perfect justice, the medical services should treat the matter as within the field of preventive medicine for the whole population ; that the Government should aim at the complete suppression of evil houses, whose keepers profit by vice, as quickly as possible ; and should increase the pro- tection available for Chinese and other girls. .We congratulate the Advisory Committee on the first Report that they have been asked to make.
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