The British Navy serves out once or twice a week a ration, which is one of the biggest jokes of naval life.  It is a small ration of lime juice, and the rumoured purpose of it is to modify in some degree this tremendous natural sex instinct.  To most of us it was like spitting on a burning building—­the battle went on fiercer every day of life!  I tackled it from two points of view; first, the moral point of view.  My religion demanded purity, continence and self-mastery.  The other point of view—­I don’t think this was clear to me at the time; I don’t believe that I intentionally pursued this course with the object in view that it actually accomplished; nevertheless, whether intentional or unintentional, planned or unplanned, the effect was produced.  The physical work required of me was light, very light, and all my leisure time was spent in study.  I studied so hard and so conscientiously that I tired not only my mind, but my body.  There came a time when I was dimly conscious, however, that I was doing two things by hard study:  I was preserving my body, conserving my vital energy, and at the same time training my mind, gathering information and equipping myself intellectually.  At the present moment my body is as lithe, as powerful and as enduring as the body of a youth of twenty, and I attribute this wealth of health to the fact that twenty-five years ago, I tackled this problem of self-mastery and laid the foundations for my present strength.

Who will give the world a novel or a book dealing with this terrific problem?  Who will tell millions of young men around the age of twenty that they cannot burn their candle at both ends?  With the ordinary man in civil life the temptation is a negligible quantity compared to the life of a soldier or sailor.  In the army and navy it is talked incessantly so that a man has a double battle to fight.  He fights the thing and he fights a multitude of suggestions that come to him every day of his life.

The most revolting, disgusting and degrading thing I ever heard talked about on a man o’ war was the perversion of the sex instinct—­the unnatural use of it!  This, too, is a joke and laughed at and talked lightly about; but the records of the British Navy, and I think of other navies, would reveal something along this line that would shock civilization.  I did not believe this possible, but the first six months on board changed my mind.

To the great credit of the British Navy, be it said that this crime is held almost equal to murder, and when an officer is convicted of it, the trial is in camera, and the findings kept secret; but no matter how high his rank, he is stripped of his standing and marched over the side of the ship as a degraded criminal and an outcast.  A man of the ranks convicted of it usually spends the rest of his natural life in prison.