The soldier's VD problem is like the merchant sailors, exaggerated by the even greater need for release when opportunity offers, as well as by pressures of another kind: from his buddies, to "be a man" from his situation, which makes his life forfeit anyway. In modern armies he has the advantages of efficient medical care.

The merchant seaman has a special VD problem. Although his lot has improved since the days of sailing vessels, with voyages tending to be shorter and ships better supplied with medical facilities, the basic problem has hardly been touched. Men are without women for abnormally long intervals, often under conditions of stress.

They are, in order, sex education; the special problems of seafaring men and soldiers; prostitution and homosexuality; and the question, why do people fail to go for treatment, or run away?

There is no serious disagreement today that greater knowledge of VD is one of the essential elements of any control scheme, and that it must come early to do the most good.

VD tends to be concentrated in cities and to follow people's movements; it is aggravated by war, poverty, ignorance, and lack of public health and medical facilities. Being spread by sexual contact, it is increased as sexual intercourse increases in the population, with promiscuity an essential factor in the process.

Admittedly, then, there are technical deficiencies in VD control; but few VD experts, if any, doubt that the non technical problems are more serious. And one of the toughest is to decide just what they are. This part of the problem is social, economic, even possibly political; but sociologists, economists, and political scientists do not concern themselves with it, and very likely ought not to.