The attached article from 1941 laid it all out honestly and without flowery metaphors – plainly stating the facts that if American military personnel were not provided some wholesome distractions, they would simply loiter around barrooms and whorehouses during their leisure time and become a drag on society.
“It is safe to say that 90 percent of the boys do not want the sort of company they are offered at roadhouses, juke joints and red-light districts, but resort to it out of sheer boredom, loneliness and the lack of proper female companionship. A vast majority of the draftees come from perfectly respectable families and in their hometowns they were accustomed to being accepted by decent people as social equals…Now that they have become draftees, they find themselves socially ostracized. That families of respectable girls would warn their daughters to keep away from soldiers was that last thing the boys expected when they enlisted, and this state of affairs has had a very bad effect on the morale of our army-in-the-making.”
More on this topic can be read here.
More about the USO during the war years can be read here
