SIR,—If the admirable article by Canon Robins in your last
issue errs at all it is in the direction of understatement. There seems to be a wave of self-indulgence and immorality attacking, most particularly, girls from thirteen upwards ; there have, indeed, been cases of even young children suffering from the most dreaded disease as a result of immorality. One of the causes, undoubtedly, is the breaking-up of home life which inevitably comes with war, when the father is on service and the mother on some kind of war work.
Girls of fourteen, moreover, on leaving school are able to earn wages far beyond anything they could hope for in peace-time. They are, in their own estimation, grown up ; they want to be like their older sisters in dress, hairdressing and make-up. What is even a greater danger, these children have developed the idea that it is the correct thing to have a man in uniform to go about with, and have had no instruction of any value about the dangers they will encounter. Almost every large town is full today of Service men far from their homes and wives. There is no doubt that girls today are laying themselves out to attract these men, especially overseas troops, and coloured men in particular, who do not understand the fact that white girls are ready and anxious to give themselves, as they undoubtedly do, for money and to have a good time. It is no use merely being shocked about all this and leaving it there. What we must do is to find some way to make it more difficult for these tragedies to take place.
We have regulations in this country today that seem inadequate during war conditions. Today, girls of sixteen are free to enter public-houses and drink until their self-control, and, what is more, self-respect, is gone. There is very little difference between fourteen and sixteen in these days, and it is after these experiences that the worst happens. During the last war treating in public-houses was forbidden ; why not now? It seems to many thinking people the one thing that would prevent many of the distressing exhibitions of ruined girlhood we can see in our streets any night upon the closing of hotels and licensed houses.
We have a Board of Censors specially appointed to scrutinise films and define those that are unfit for young people to see, and yet we take no notice of the fact that every day when an "A " film is being shown there are a number of children getting in by attaching themselves to some quite unknown adult. Frequently girls of thirteen and fourteen have attached themselves to coloured soldiers and others and been able to see films that only have the effect of arousing in them instincts that ought to be unknown to them for many years.
This is a national question and not one that can be dealt with by individual localities, and the sooner steps are taken by our leaders the better for the country. Girls and boys are in great danger, and the evil encountered by them will not easily be eradicated the moment the war is over, but affect perhaps the whole of their lives.—I am, Sir, yours, &c., MURIEL OPENSHAW.
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