Part 10

The weakest point of Lady Henry's letter is the erroneous assumption on which it is based: that her proposals themselves were moral, and that if the Government had instituted reforms they might have successfully co-existed with regulation. But how can regulation under any circumstances be a remedy? The very terms are self-contradictory. What is morally wrong can never be experimentally right, and this proposition neither casuistry nor expediency can set aside. The only remedy is obedience to the law of God; and if material aids be needed, let them be found in some active measures for the mental, moral, and spiritual improvement of our soldiers in their leisure hours. This is where reform is needed.

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The foregoing Letter, together with the article from _The Christian_, were printed in full in _The Shield_ (the official organ of the British Committee of the Federation for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice) of March, 1898, with the following

NOTE BY THE EDITOR.

"We are glad to see that Lady Henry Somerset has now withdrawn from the proposals for the Regulation of Vice with which her name has become connected. At the same time we regret that she still appears to think that her scheme could possibly have done good if side by side with it had been some moralizing agency. Our position is and has uniformly been that Regulation is essentially under all circumstances a demoralizing agency, and must be so from the very nature of the case; and that the provision of women certified fit for immoral purposes is necessarily disastrous whatever be the concomitants of such a proposition."

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Transcriber's Notes

The old-fashioned English names of towns and cities in South Asia that are used in the text have been retained. Variations in the spelling of other words are unchanged unless noted in the following.

* Corrections to the Original Text

The following misprints and other errors have been corrected:

Page 23 - the word "prostitutues" changed to "prostitutes" ("a system of compulsory examination of prostitutes").

Page 42 - the text "to be longer" changed to "to be any longer" ("when too old to be any longer 'sufficiently attractive' to the soldier").

Page 101 - the word "analagous" changed to "analogous" ("are closely analogous to the conditions").

* Other Changes

The following changes to the original text have been made for clarity or consistency:

The title "Commander-in-chief" changed to "Commander-in-Chief" throughout to match the formal title used in original documents.

Page xi - "Anglo Indian" changed to "Anglo-Indian" in CONTENTS.

Page 42 - the word "unbiassed" changed to "unbiased".

Page 87 - "the C.D. Acts" changed to "the C. D. Acts".

Page 103 - "prized C.D. Acts" changed to "prized C. D. Acts".

Page 107 - the text "World's W. C. T. U." changed to "World's W.C.T.U."

* Notes

The words "bazar" and "bazaar" appear throughout the text. The authors normally use "bazaar" in their narrative while the facsimile copies of Army documents in Appendix A show both spellings being used.

Appendix A (pages 114-121) is a transcription of the facsimiles of original documents. The resulting text has been slightly reformatted to fit within a page width of 72 characters but retains the general layout of the original documents along with their inconsistent spelling. In regard to this latter point the following issues are noted:

Page 117 - "his Excellency" is inconsistent with other references to "His Excellency" in the same document.

Page 118 - the word "insistance" rather than "insistence" is used.

Appendix C (pages 124-127) uses the word "retractation". This is correct in the context in which it is used. It is a rarely used noun, defined in the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English as meaning "the act of retracting what has been said; recantation."

* Changes to Footnotes

The footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of each chapter.

* Variations in Spelling

The following variations of a word, rank or descriptive term are present in the original text and have been retained. The variations occur because the authors use one spelling in their narrative but retain any different spelling which occurs in text that they quote:

"bazaar" and "bazar" "Hindoo" and "Hindus" "Lieut-General" and "Lieut.-Gen." "memoranda", "memorandums" and "memorandum" "Mohammedan" and "Mohamedun" "smallpox" and "small-pox" "today" and "to-day"