Ettie Rout’s example one to be followed

ETTIE Rout would have rotated in her isolated Rarotonga grave in regard to the disgraceful, illegal destruction of the Otago University students’ menstruating magazine cover.

Ettie is one of the nation’s unrecognised sexinformation heroes.

By her own efforts she set up the ‘‘New Zealand sisterhood’’ to work among our soldiers for ‘‘safe sex’’ during World War 1.

This incredible woman raised the money and the first ‘‘sisterhood’’ women went to Egypt in October 1915. Ettie went in December and found venereal disease rampant among our soldiers through a lack of sufficient instruction and necessary kit.

The army authorities did little about this for fear of encouraging the soldiers to sample sex provided by the hundreds of prostitutes surrounding the Maadi camp.

Ettie put together a prophylactic kit, including condoms, for the men, to the outrage of the senior officers.

Her ‘‘safesex’’ campaign was at a time when syphilis was as deadly as the shooting and shelling the soldiers encountered. Gonorrhoea was incurable.

Compared with Ettie’s brave, unremitting campaign of practical help to our troops, the Critic

censorship scandal should lead to changes in the university’s proctor’s office.

Why? Because we citizens have a lawful right to freedom of expression and opinions of any kind in any form. Jim Moffat

Caversham