BFI

This remarkably explicit dramatised documentary was made to educate and warn Canadian troops about the dangers of catching venereal disease. As the biblical title suggests, it is essentially a straight sermon, a form that its target audience would have found familiar both from church at home and during their military service. The protagonist is warned, is tempted to ignore the advice, is rescued in the nick of time by a well-wisher and is finally shown the devastating consequences in another that he has so narrowly avoided.

The temptations of consorting with prostitutes are slightly played down, the women being portrayed as not only spreaders of disease but as part of a criminal underclass. The no-holds-barred images of the effects of the disease and the grim ending deliver the message efficiently and without compunction.

The film ends with lines based on the poem The Price He Paid (Poems of Problems, 1914) by Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

And the child she bore me was blind,
And stricken and weak and ill,
And the mother was left a wreck.
It was they who paid the bill.

Bryony Dixon

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