These are but a few of the many instances in which the official records sent to London for inspection, contradicted the testimony of military officers.
The first sitting of the Departmental Committee was April 11, its last sitting August 15, and its report was circulated in Parliament September 11, 1893.
With the acknowledgment from the Commander-in-Chief of the truth of our statements, a most sweeping victory had been gained for the cause; no under-official could very well dispute the word of the Commander-in-Chief of the army. Lord Roberts' remark that "the ladies themselves would have found their task considerably lightened" had they been "commended to the care of the authorities in India," was the source of a good deal of amusement on the part of our friends, and led to many a sarcastic comment on the part of the public press; some of which ran somewhat as follows: "As Lord Roberts freely admitted that he did not know these things, certainly had the ladies appealed to him they need not have come back so loaded with information; this would have greatly lightened their task." "As there was a regulation which allowed any suspicious characters to be expelled from the Cantonments without assigning a reason therefor, the application of this regulation would greatly have 'lightened their task,'" etc., etc.
What had been fully established by the evidence cannot be better expressed than in the recent utterance of the British Committee for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice, _i.e._:--
"The fact was fully established that the so-called voluntary system had been completely overridden by _extra-legal_ practices, of which the provision placing, or interpreted to have placed, venereal diseases under the same rule as 'cholera, small-pox, diphtheria, or typhoid fever,' became the fulcrum or pivot." The thing which now remained to be done was to embody the Resolution of the House of Commons of 1888 in a law which must be passed by the Government of India, that could not be longer evaded or disobeyed. After much discussion and consideration, the Secretary of State for India directed that the Cantonment regulations which related to the removal to hospital of those persons suspected of contagious or infectious diseases, must be so altered as to admit of the treatment of contagious diseases due to vice in a manner that would not be liable to abuse of or injury to the reputation of women.