Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/233

 of this are given.

The danger to the morale of a young soldier is obvious. He is not so likely to impair his vigour for duty, as to become morally inert and unambitious. Mercenary, cynical by such a resource, he degrades himself, to degrade others. He laughs at the shy complaints of new boy-recruits in want of money, and tells them how to "make something" by a twilight stroll in Hyde Park or the Prater; by an half-hour in the promenade of a music-hall in London or Rome or Berlin; in a bath-house, or wherever else. But, far worse, such circumstances readily put the soldier-prostitute into associations with the directly criminal classes of a metropolis. When his military-term is over, he has developed toward a professional prostitute of the lowest civilian-class; toward thief, housebreaker, forger, blackmailer and what not else. With degraded uranistic feelings, not inborn but cultivated, he loses an idea of marriage, of raising a family. Thus his country's census is the poorer. Many a young soldier-prostitute of the famous Stadt-Park alleys in Vienna, of the Thiergarten in Berlin, of the boulevard of an Italian town, thinks that he will forget all such sexual chapters of garrison-days when he is mustered out, and at home.—"It is just a part of one's life now, for me as for thousands of others!" But the consequences may be deplorable. He may not "forget"—anything so potent toward his ruin.

The Uranian patron in a vast array prefers the soldier's "services"; is what we have termed "philostratic"—or specifically soldier-loving—in his sexual impulses.

There are practical reasons, even when the patron is of far superior social grade. The young artillerist, cavalryman, or what else, is soldierly, well-dressed, and