The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1902-11-08
h E HON E.

The suicide within few weeks of
four United States naval officers, one
of them a chaplain, has created no
little stir in the Navy Department.
A number of explanations have been
put forward to account for the self
destruction of brilliant officers in the
enjoyment of fine positions, but none
of the reasons which have been stated
touch the root of the trouble. Death
is repellant to every man who is in
the possession of youth, health, rea-
son and a share of the things neces-
sary to comfortable existence. Life
becomes insupportable only when dis
ease weakens the moral and physical
courage, or debt, dishonor and depri-
vation have robbed it of all charm.
The life of naval officer is essential
ly calculated to breed misanthropy
and unhappiness. The centre around
which society revovles is the home,
the one great source of human happi-
ness. A satisfactory home life is i'm
possible to the naval officer. His
three years of sea duty, alternating
with his shore leave, break up the
continuity of his home life and rem
ders him often a stranger to his wife
and children until the period of his
age retirement, when he has reached
an age when it is too late to take up
the broken threads. For these rea-
SONS many naval officers do not marry
at all, and after they have passed
their several lower grades and have
reach the dead level of official prefer
ment where promotion depends upon
deaths and retirements, their careers
afford less and less satisfaction, their
bachelor quarters become into1erable,
and too often drink and suicide is the
end.
The military career is inevitably
destructive of home life and, there
fore, destructive of society. For this
reason large standing army is Sc
rious hurt to nation quite apart from
questions of expense and -produc-
tiveness. For this reason, also, it is
impossible in time of peace to find re-
cruits for the military service save
among the most ignorant and un-
thinking. The intelligent man in
stinctively shrinks from a career
which deprives him of the real hap
piness of life for however much the
Benedict may be fouted, he is, after
all, the only well-rounded and thor
oughly developed man. The plea of
and earlier time that the artist, the
poet and the great thinker, sacrificed
something of their finer powers in as
suming the care and perplexities of
family life has no place in modern
thought.
When Josiah Wedgwood, the emi-
nent English potter, was struggling
young man he yielded to the impulse
of love and married the young woman
who had long been his sweetheart.
Josiah Wedgwood has ruined his
career" was the universal verdict of
his friends. But these hasty critics
did NOT reckon Ilnon the mower repos-
ed in true wife. 1T shall never be
said that Josiah Wedgwood's life was
spoiled by his wife," was her cour-
ageous answer to the predictions of
these friends. Thus determined she
encouraged her struggling husband,
cheerfully sharing his trials and his
cruel economies in the disheartening
years between experiment, failure
and success, and eventually shared
with him to the full in his great tri-
umph. Thus it has been with the
true wife ever, and thus the home has
sheltered, protected, inspired, and en-
nobled the man always; and any
scheme of life in which the domestic
hearth is eliminated or given an in
significant place, is inimical to society
and the State. Adgance.