Independent Online Edition > This Britain

Independent Online Edition > This Britain: "While American commanders expressed concern that their troops were catching venereal disease as they consorted with the 'hordes' of young women who congregated outside troop hostels and West End hotels, the Foreign Office and senior Army officers worried that wartime sexual liberation was sending the wrong image of Britain abroad and could hand the Nazis a propaganda coup.
In one particularly intemperate memo, the officer in charge of London's civil defence complained that Leicester Square had been turned into an open-air den of vice. Admiral Sir Edward Evans wrote to the head of Scotland Yard, Commissioner Philip Game: 'Leicester Square at night is the resort of the worst type of women and girls consorting with men of the British and American forces, with the latter predominating."