CAMP WELFARE COMMITTEE
taking medicine and in some cases requested the textbook. The death rate at once diminished and in twenty-four hours reached the zero mark.
Visits to the prison wards in the hospital led later on to “follow-up” work in the prison itself. The response to the truth was so great and the need so evident, that the effort to divide the time equally between the different units was finally abandoned, the prison becoming the scene of the Worker's greatest activity and the hospital being given such time as remained. Unlike most penal institutions, men in the naval prison number few criminals, most of the offenses being of a military character and not punishable by a civil court. Scarcely more than boys, many are mere youths who entered the service in a burst of patriotism, with an undeveloped sense of responsibility and unfortunately no great appreciation of the importance of obedience. Here is more ignorance than viciousness; more thoughtlessness than deliberate disobedience. The effect of a prison sentence upon this type of undisciplined, independent American young manhood, without a knowledge of real obedience and right government, and a true understanding of freedom, was distressing in the extreme, to put the case mildly. Here, therefore, was an opportunity to demonstrate practically that the truth does make free, opening prison doors. Soon some of these young men by reading the textbook for which they had themselves asked, found their real freedom, even before gaining release from confinement. The bettering of positions in the prison was the rule with the men who became earnestly interested in Science. Services soon followed the regular Monitor distribution. When the work was first started the Commanding Officer expressed to the
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