Public morals / [James Marchant, editor].

Date:
[between 1900 and 1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Public morals / [James Marchant, editor]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    spirit which govern the training of military men. And we need something more in the army than medical lectures of a utilitarian kind, which have little power over the careless heart and habits of the lad of twenty. Amid the crowded companionships of the barrack-room he needs the solid sense of an invisible Friend beside him, to whom he is bound by the deepest gratitude and devotion, without whom he cannot live and dare not die, and whom he cannot endure to wound by sinning. The Christian life, honestly accepted with all its obligations, is, after all, the best preventive; and it is, above all, to the growing influence of Christian men in the army that we must look for a real advance in this matter. Unfortunately, now as in the last century, the two forms of effort—the elevating and the debasing—are to be run side by side. Now, as then, it is too likely that the latter may outrun the former, and make it almost impossible for any decent ideal to live in its degrading presence. If medical officers use the compulsory powers conferred on them, in such a way as practically to re-establish Regulation in India, we may expect to see the failures of the past repeated. It is only by turning their attention to methods more in accordance with modern science and with actual needs, and utilising every influence that makes for progress, that disease will be permanently reduced, and will sink into a comparatively insignificant place among the factors that affect the welfare of the British army in India. For it is not along one line only that the