Chicago Tribune
MORALITY ZONE TO ENCOMPASS AMERICAN ARMY
———
Military Police Cordon in Plan; Paris is Barred.
———
Washington, D. C., Sept. 16. —[Special].— When the your of the nation assembles in the various cantonments for war training it will find zones and precautions against both physical and moral disease such as the world has never known.
When, having undergone training that will make them soldiers and they journey into France and Flanders, they will find the same far-flung zones and regulations cast around them for their protection.
Dr. Franklin Martin of Chicago, chairman of the medical advisory committee of the council of national defense, told today in as great detail as may now be disclosed the iron laws and rules that will protect the men of the national guard and of the national army against themselves and against the moral contamination of others.
Paris Barred to Soldiers
"It is a plan," Dr. Martin explained, "that goes far beyond anything that has ever been attempted in the way disease and morals regulation either in wars or in peace."
In the first place, soldiers who go to France will find a cordon of military police around them. This living wall will bar the way of soldiers on leave who desire to go to forbidden places — and the principal forbidden place is Paris.
No only will Paris be unknown territory to the American soldiers but so will be other large towns and even villages where danger may exist.
Dr. Martin made it clear that the first purpose of this rigorous measure it to guard the heal of the soldier, and the second to protect the morale of the American army.
If the police authorities of these towns prove complaisant or negligent in their attitude toward the social vice, guards with rifles will take possession of every house designated as crooked by the section on social hygiene that will be a feature of the work of every cantonment.
Sober, Clean, Happy Army.
"A sober army and a clean army," is the watchword of the devoted physicians and the welfare worker who will live with the troops. "Given these two conditions," they say, "we will guarantee a healthful and a reasonably happy army."
