The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-08-02

hours, and it is not customary to give
one man more than one elderly at
each port, when the stay is short, so
that a very thorough understanding of
the world is not going to be gained by
a sailorman who gees around it, stop
l'ping, in the course of a year, at five
ports. He would then have had FIVE
days of CELEBRITY five days of that
thing for which he enlisted the Joy
of foreign climes and scenes. Know
ing well how precious is this liberty
the executive officer always reserves as
his choicest punishment the curtail-
| ment thereof. But the sailorman has
remedy for too much punishment of
| that nature, and he uses it-desertion.
In the restriction of money lies an
| other sore spot, both with the powers
above and with those below. A cap
tain, who is supreme on his ship, who,
| in emergency, holds the power of life
and DEATH may not cut a man s pay in
any way, but he may withhold it. This
condition, which could not exist in any
| factory in the United States, works out
| in the man, if intensified by the reign
| ing authority, a fragrant sense of in
| justice. Hold man S pay long enough,
even if you give him all the liberty
| he can use, and he will desert
If you consider those three conditions
| leading to desertion-food, the abnor-
| mality of the life and the restrictions
you will see it resolves itself into
a question of the individual ship, of
the individual officers on that ship, and
of the man himself, both before and
after he enlists.
There are contributory causes L
| have named above the three that are
acute. One of the lesser causes which
| frequently prevents reenlistment, is
the effectual bar to ambition. Military
service in our republic, both on land
and sea, is relic of monarchical forms,
and the final death throes of that re-
Cancellation of republic with monarchy
is occurring in the Navy. While quite
legal, it is next to impossible for an
enlisted man to rise from the ranks
to high command, especially in the
| Navy. There are a few rare instances
of commissions granted to men who did
not come through the Naval Academy
at Annapolis but the history of the
men who bore them is not interesting
reading. The step from a warrant of
fcer to a wardroom officer is the same
that it is from the yeomanry of Eng
land to the peerage. There were yeo-
men who became peers, but they are
very dim in the pages of history. That
goes in England but not here.
Too large part of the enlisted men
is picked up on the streets of the cities
and is tough. Another part finds in
the Navy sort of boarding school for
Youngsters whose parents can not af-
ford to send them up the Hudson, or
down into Virginia, or out into mid
e. H.
of heave and tackle. Our man-o wars
men are not drawn from our seafaring
population, and they are almost with
ont exception native born. They may
be loyal, they must be clean, and they
cannot be else than efficient, but only
an infatuated midshipman on his first
cruise, or a reminiscent admiral in his
dotage, could call some of them intelli-
gent.
''If L had a square headed wrench
I'd turn his head around so s he
could think straight I heard
DO N s mate say of a rocky one day
rocky" being his quick way Of pro-
nouncing "recruit.' If officers do
contend that they have very spry and
clever crew grant Them the benefit #
the doubt, if you catch that crew
in the middle of cruise, when ennui
is on them, and assay them, you might
find trace of gray matter (they are
Americans, alI, but no more. Find
them ashore the first day, with
month IS pay in their pocket, and you
would dispense with the assay.
After all, it resolves itself into the
old anxious problem; Whose master
am / And the question is directed
very specifically at the breasts of
large number of charming gentlemen
who bear naval commissions in the ser
vice of the United States. On their
handling of their men depends the in
crease or the decrease of desertions.
There is the well meaning officer, who
"Ieads' them. Out amid the guns
they laugh at him. Then there is the
old seadog. who "'drives them while
they are in sight, and, out of sight, to
desertion.
Between these two. blended, forming
Continued on Page Fifteen.)