Boys Meet Girls

One day last July a young Methodist clergyman from Boston University, the Rev. John M. Swomley Jr., stood before the U. S. Senate's Committee on Military Affairs and argued against the draft act. Dark, intense Pastor Swomley snapped up senatorial eyebrows when he said:

"Conscription takes boys--and I think, gentlemen, this is one of the most important points I have--conscription takes boys shortly out of high school, boys who all their lives have been taught to respect women . . . and places them in situations where the absence of normal contact with girls induces a mass lust which has always characterized Army units. . . ."

Senator Schwartz: "What?"

Mr. Swomley: "Mass lust. I will clarify that."

Senator Schwartz, hastily: "That is not necessary. That is clear enough. You need not amplify that."

Camps and Vamps. Whether or not the Rev. Mr. Swomley had a cogent argument against conscription, the Army's vice problem was bound to expand along with the expanding Army. Chief of Staff George C. Marshall last fortnight remarked the "influx of persons of questionable reputation" into towns near growing Army posts, begged for local cooperation in keeping soldiers' amusement clean. The American Social Hygiene Association, culling reports from scores of undercover investigations, estimated that by last week 50,000 trulls were on defense duty. The U. S. Public Health Service, anxious to prevent a rise in venereal rates, offered to help local police, courts, health officers clean up known centres of infection.

The problem was most acute in small towns near military posts. Local health services were often impoverished, lackadaisical; so were local police, with whom Army police must cooperate. At two extremes were respectable, aseptic Battle Creek, Mich, ("the cereal city") and dreary Phenix City, Ala. Prompted by the wealthy First Congregational Church's outspoken, realistic Rev. Carleton Brooks Miller, Battle Creek officials decided to establish segregated, supervised zones for prostitutes who swarmed in after the 20,000 soldiers at nearby Camp Custer. Unchecked, unsupervised honky-tonks in Phenix City shot up the venereal rate at Fort Benning, Ga., nine miles away. Desperate officers talked of extending the military reservation to Phenix City, razing the town.

Sin v. Ping-Pong. Venereal infection during World War I cost the Army 6,500,000 man-days (time lost in hospitals). Military police patrol towns as best they can, mark the most putrid spots "out of bounds." Military medicos provide soldiers with oral caution beforehand, treatment afterward, encourage local authorities to provide free prophylaxis stations. Army (and Navy) doctors generally prefer controlled segregation, covertly discourage the more extreme efforts of such agencies as the American Social Hygiene Association to abolish prostitution by legal action. Theory (which the Association disputes): when the business scatters, disease increases. Last week the Association proposed that Congress make prostitution within 15 miles of Army and Navy posts a Federal offense.

The Army also does what it can by offering counter-attractions: Ping-pong, movies, athletics, kindred activities of its new Morale Division (TIME, Sept. 30). Mainstays of this program will be the Army's new hostesses, womanly but not too female. Average age of the first 15 hostesses: 36 to 38. Last week soldiers at Fort Dix, N. J. met their hostess recruits. Mrs. Ethel Keech Logan, 48, the senior hostess at Dix, posed in horn-rimmed glasses with three soldiers, wanly playing cards. Miss Ernestine E. Latimer, 36, one of Dix's junior hostesses, has dark hair, a pleasant smile, a recreational philosophy: "It's just like balance in diet. You have to have fun for a balanced living."

The Y. M. C. A., Salvation Army, Jewish Welfare Board, Knights of Columbus, et al. used to provide the Army with its recreational facilities. Except at 16 posts where the "Y" already had huts, the Army, like the Navy, has quietly handed over to its Morale Division all recreation on Army posts (relegating the outside agencies to nearby towns). The Army daren't say it for political reasons, but it is sure that fun is superior to holiness as a competitor with vice. The banished organizations professed not to mind, asked only that the Army tell them just what they were expected to do--perhaps, they hinted, help them out financially. Up to last week they had received precious little information, no money. Five of the most important (including the Y. M. C. A., Jewish Welfare Board, Knights of Columbus) formed a National United Welfare Committee for Defense, hoped thus to regain military recognition.

Into this hodgepodge of sin and fun a new figure stepped last week. Federal Security Administrator Paul Vories McNutt was designated coordinator of all social, health, recreational aspects of defense. If Mr. McNutt had any clear idea of what he was supposed to do, he did not let on.

Typical McNuttery: "We, in Washington, cannot prescribe exactly how . . . Three Corners, Iowa, shall organize and equip itself to provide those necessary special services and community facilities which may be needed to provide wholesome recreation for the soldiers who will stream into that town from an adjacent cantonment. . . . But, if we believe in democracy, if we believe in the ability of local communities to meet local problems, then we have ... a plan by which this aspect of the defense program may successfully meet the challenge of the prowling war lords." Tarts, soldiers, Army medicos, "Y" secretaries promptly dismissed Mr. McNutt from their calculations, judged that sin v. fun up to last week was no better in hand than many another defense tangle.

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