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

guard is constantly stationed with guns
loaded with ball. He has a reading
and writing room, the prison library,
and his friends may come to see him
one afternoon a month. Better than
that, he is allowed three dollars a
month for postage stamps and tobacco,
and if he writes his letters on thin
paper and uses tobacco which is made
of the sweepings from the floor and
comes pound for nickel, he can
go long way on three dollars.
It is worth while, for moment, to
go back a hundred years and consider
what they did to deserters then. Our
deserters today are made into more or
less good citizens, finally. In those
days they invariably became pirates.
Nothing was left for them after hav-
ing been served with this judgment,
which I quote from an old excise
book Git was the style of punishment
in vogue in the British Navy in 1882
IF convicted of desertion he
shall be branded on the shoulder
and on the hip Ebefore the Revo-
lutionary War this was on the
forehead with D at least two
inches in height; he shall be shaw
ed over half his head, over half
his eyebrows and half his beard;
he shall be towed ashore backward
in a dinghy with a g9Ilows erected
over him, and the moose hanging
within six inches Of his neck; he
shall then be stripped of his cloth
ing and shall be given two hum
bred stripes on his bare back;
finally, he shall be turned adrift.
In what I have submitted above I
have merely dramatized a typical de-
serter IS story, one that [ happened to
come in more or/less personal contact
with. For nearly five months now I
have been studying this question of
desertion, and it has been a hard one
to understand. The cause is not in
adequate pay-I feel quite sure of
that. While the amount of physical
labor at first looks large, it is doubt
less not so when you consider that
health and happiness at sea demand
constant activity. But there are causes
which are patent, and among them
permit me to amplify the following:
/. The life itself The conditions
of life at sea are abnormal. You have
no chance for home, you have no
natural diversions, you are practically
in prison. And yet men have fol-
lowed the sea from the beginning of
time, and will doubtless follow it many
centuries to come. They find substitu-
tes. There is never eeasing travel,
and there is that swell and reach and
rage, that bland smile and angry
stroke of the ever constant sea, and
then that pent-up force of seclusion
that dwells ever in rife ball, 7ait-
ing for some one to loose the powder
which lies behind; all of this gratifes
a curious nature and overcomes the
monotony of eircumscribed exist
enee which is so irks0me to the rest
less; also, it breeds deserters.
g Food The food of the enlisted
man of the American Navy is the best
in the world. It is so good that / have
frequently seen wardroom officers go
to the crews mess and abstract there
from certain well-cooked dishes which
happened to appeal more to their tastes
than those being served by their own
steward. Not that this meant any
difficulty, for it was done on ships where
there never was question of the food in
either mess. The trouble lies on those
ships where no wardroom officer ever
navs any attention to n crew IS mess, far
less ever wants to eat therefrom. The
entire enlisted force has stated al
lowance, thirty cents per day per man,
for subsistence, and out Of this, buy.
ing in such enormous lots, they ought
to get very excellent fare. Unfor-
tunately, the commissary stewards
who do the selection and who super
wise the preparation are as various as
the types of battleships they serve on
nay, more various: they are as va
rious as the officers who man those
ships. If the food on one ship is bet
ter than that on another in the same
squadron or the same feet. discon-
tent is sure to arise, and if on any
ship the food is unsatisfactory. the
cook ing poor or the bill-of- fare monot
onous there is Immediately form of
discomfort that not infrequently mounts
TO desertion.
3. Restriction There are two
forms, of elderly and Of money.
Men cannot 60 ashore unless they have
'Hberty,' and elderly is seldom
granted for more than twenty-four