"City of Shame"

Every weekend, G.I.s swarm into the ancient city of Oxford. They saunter down High Street, crowd into its ancient pubs, block every streetcorner. There are 15,000 of them on U.S. Air Force bases in the area around Oxford. The G.I.s like girls, and the girls like G.I.s: for one thing, they have more money to spend than the local boys. Oxford also, for as long as anybody can remember, has had a high rate of illegitimate births (7.9% v. 5.0% for the rest of England). Whenever a British tabloid editor wants to flog up some circulation, he puts together the G.I.s, the girls and the illegitimacy rate and launches a crusade. Last year London's Daily Sketch launched the latest, complete with pictures of G.I.s link-armed with "glamour-hungry girls in search of uniformed 'Gregory Pecks' on leave from nearby U.S. camps."

Last week a committee appointed by the Bishop of Dorchester reported on what is called the "City of Shame." It found that G.I.s "with money to spend" might be one of the causes, but there were many others, including the large university population, the inadequate police force, "the considerable number of workers living in lodgings and hostels away from the security and restraint of their homes." The committee concluded: "In our judgment, the chief cause is the growing belief that there is nothing wrong in sexual relations before marriage or in unfaithfulness after marriage."

The U.S.A.F. was quietly gratified. It announced that its own investigation showed that only six illegitimate babies born in Oxford last year (out of about 120) had been fathered by G.I.s.

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