ble,
something less exacting. In looking for a way out of the situation he
availed himself of the first opportunity, stole a suit of clothes with
the avowed purpose of being discharged for the offense. Here is the
starting point of his criminal career. He did not reflect upon the
consequences. He knew he must gratify his desire to get out of the
Navy, must do it at any cost, and yielded to temptation. This yielding
to temptation, this lack of power of resistance, characterized his
entire life. He yielded to every vice that crossed his path; he stole,
he drank, he became a morphine habitue, he sniffed cocaine, acquired
gonorrhoea and syphilis in his promiscuous sexual trends, and lastly
yielded to sexual perversion. After having served his first sentence
he was released and again found himself thrown upon his own resources.
He had not, as yet, reached the stage of the habitual criminal with
the utter disregard for property rights, nor had he reached that
nonchalance of the hobo, whose philosophy rests upon the dogma that
the world owes him a living, that tomorrow will provide for itself
somehow. He began to yearn for the service again. There, at least, he
was provided with shelter and food. There, at least, he did not have
to worry for the tomorrow. He entered the Army, deserted, re-entered,
deserted again, and kept this up until he was dishonorably discharged
seven times. He could stand it just so long. His lack of stability,
his inability for any continuous purposive effort, made him slip from
under the stress. He has less dread for the future now. He was
beginning to acquire that naive philosophy that somehow the world
would provide for him. We next hear of him across the ocean. Here his
"wanderlust", his love of adventure, reasserts itself, but somehow he
did not fit into existing conditions, and unable, because of his
particular organization, because of his disequilibrated mentality, to
create for himself a suitable environment, his existence continued to
be an unbroken chain of conflicts, of contradictions, and of failure.
He finally tried matrimony, but here, too, he soon felt the
overwhelming burden of duties and obligations. He was not assisted in
sustaining these by any moral sense, by any paternal feelings--and
after a more or less continuous struggle to cope with the situation,
left wife, situation and all. He realized subjectively that he an