The war brought the threat, and sometimes the reality, of a sudden
loosening in sexual customs. It drew millions of women out of their
households and into the work force, and wrenched an even greater number
of men from their homes for military service. Placing the threat of death or
injury in the minds of soldiers and civilians alike, the conflict shook the
existing moral order.
In Britain, for example, the huge influx of women into well-paid jobs in
munitions plants led to public conduct that shocked observers. Working
women used their new freedom to drink in public, to dress in provocative
new styles (short skirts and even trousers), and to purchase luxury goods
with their newfound affluence. For many, these were unwelcome departures
from the country's traditions of proper behavior. A rapid increase in the
number of divorces hkewise seemed a clear sign of society's decay.
In all the warring countries, the dangers faced by the fighting man made
hanging on to traditional sexual morality difficult at best. Men on leave or
in rest areas near the front found prostitutes readily available. Unmarried
women at home found it harder to deny sexual favors to a boyfriend who
might never return from his next turn in the trenches. Married women, out
of loneliness or financial desperation, were tempted to ignore their obligations
to their spouses.
George Abel Schreiner, who observed the growing hunger in the Central
Powers, watched the changes in moral behavior as well in wartime Germany
and Austria. As a widely traveled war correspondent, he found signs of a
sliding moral order from the cafes where combat soldiers gathered in brief
leaves from the fighting front to homes where women without their husbands
could no longer govern the behavior of their children.
By the close of 1916, the cost of the war in manpower in Germany and
Austria meant that marriageable women now outnumbered eligible men by a
ratio of five to four. British observers grew alarmed about a rise in illegitimate
children. The number of divorces in England and Wales increased 500 percent
between the last year of peace and 1919. The increase in male drunkenness,
and the new phenomenon of widespread drunkenness among women, seemed
direct results of the high wages paid in the buzzing economy.
Illegitimate births rose sharply in Germany, too—so much so that most
areas of Germany ended the practice of indicating illegitimacy on birth
certificates. With families facing the stress of a father at the front and a
mother in the arms factory, juvenile delinquency escalated. Restrictions on
adolescents also faded as the wartime economy offered them jobs and high
wages and undermined traditional systems of apprenticeship. After two
years of war, Germany saw a 50 percent rise in crime among male teenagers.
It went up another 25 percent in 1917. German authorities pointed to theft
as a particular concern, attributing it largely to the lack of a parent in the
home. In Berlin in 1917, for example, the authorities noted that only 8
percent of teenagers working in industry were under the supervision of both
parents; only 20 percent had even one parent present. They were also
alarmed by "licentiousness," that is, improper sexual behavior, among
female adolescents. The suggested remedy was "corrective education,"
probably meaning confinement in a state-run juvenile home.
In Britain, the authorities likewise faced frightening changes. Children
only thirteen or fourteen years old were, like their German counterparts,
earning enough in the wartime economy to cause them to shake off parental
supervision. A consequent concern was the jump in the level of juvenile
crime, especially for children ages eleven to thirteen. Theft was the most
common offense, with consignment to a reformatory or industrial school the
most common remedy. Teenage girls were seen as victims of "khaki fever,"
an attraction to young men in uniform expressed in loitering around army
bases and dispensing sexual favors. The resulting threat to social stability
involved both the spread of immorality among lower-class girls who participated
in this infatuation and the spread of venereal disease. Members of
the middle class responded to the danger by forming groups like the Women
Patrols Committee to help supervise public places where such girls congregated.
These unofficial organizations sometimes got the sanction of local
government and operated in conjunction with police constables.
World History
