When the question was raised yesterday at the annual meeting in London of the Association of Poor Law Unions as to the source of venereal infections, it was stated that it was well known that Germans were very amenable to the disease by the looseness of their moral code.
Germans had, it was argued, a high scientific process to deal with contagion, but, said the Rev. R. T. Tacon, ╥they do not apply that in the channel which is the most important. I have four sons in the army, and I don╒t want them to be contaminated: I would rather that we could infect the German with good, healthy English blood.╙ He added that the danger of foreign infection was not absent even now, because he knew of Germans employed at an hotel who had now conveniently become Swiss.
The meeting decided that it would be no harm to have detention of infected cases, but that the natural disinclination of affected persons to declare their disease rendered the notification condition a negation of the good object in view.
The discussion arose out of a letter from the Salford Board of Guardians calling for the internment of all Germans as a source of infection. Approving the idea, the conference instructed the Executive Council to take all the necessary steps to give effect to this view.
