BOOK DEPARTMENT
Members of the Institute, both regular and associate, may save money by ordering books through its Book Department, which will supply any obtainable book. A discount of 10 per cent is allowed on books published by the Institute, and 5 per cent on books of other publishers (government and foreign publications excepted). Address Secretary-Treasurer, U. S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland.
MEDICAL ASPECTS OF CRIME. By Dr. Norwood East (His Majesty’s Commissioner of Prisons, Home Office, London). Philadelphia: P. Blakiston’s Son & Co. x+437 pp. 1936. $6.50.
Reviewed by Dr. Harold S. Hulbert
For our purposes, this book might well be called Social Aspects of Penology in England. Therein is its appeal and value to officials who have to do with the trial, selection of punishment, and management of delinquents and criminals. It is as great folly to repeat mistakes as it is to ignore the teachings of history; there is no room now in an organization as efficient as the Navy for mismanaging in archaic ways the “problem personnel.”
This book is sound and practical and it is not modernistic, futuristic, or sentimental. It is well written, rarely too technical (medical knowledge and philosophy are now no longer cloistered), lucid, and very informative. More laymen than physicians will read it with understanding and benefit.
The first four chapters are a history of English penology, and reveal the growth in the last four centuries of knowledge of crime, of criminals, and of criminology, especially penology. “Every mistake in human relations carries its own penalty, and the price is high” is as true now as when the French sage said it long ago. The reviewer realizes the positive side of handling personnel and therefore realizes that, since morale is of positive value in military and naval affairs in extra loyalty and in volunteering in extra duty as well as in the prevention of mutiny, every correct handling of human relations carries its own benefits, and the rewards are high. It is wise to learn both from the mistakes and from the knowledge of the past. This book is so educational that it prevents its readers from ever again expressing indignant provincial attitudes in commenting upon wrongdoers—thus it will make for a stronger Navy.
The rest of the book is a collection of essays and papers read before assemblies: each is good, the whole is not complete as all phases of crime, criminology, and of penology are not discussed. Of special interest will be the chapter on Adolescent Mental Inefficiency and Delinquency. We now thoroughly exclude applicants at our recruiting offices if the applicants are unhealthy, ignorant, or feeble-minded. Yet adolescence, which is not complete until twenty-four, has other pitfalls: the author is at his most helpful best in his differentiation between indolence and fatigability. The chapters on suicide are better, as judged by American standards, than the parts on alcoholism. The chapter on exhibitionism is true although incomplete.
Worse than un-understanding is misunderstanding, i.e., partial understanding with partial ignorance, for inevitably prejudice and even superstition creep in to fill the gaps, with resulting malign and needless complications. The historic past illuminates the present.
And of course officers in the Medical Corps who have to do with courts-martial will be glad to read the book after it is brought to their attention.
TWENTY YEARS UNDER THE SEA. By J. E. Williamson. Boston: Hale, Cushman and Flint. 1936. $2.50.
Reviewed by Lieutenant (j.g.) Robert T. Sutherland, Jr. (C.C.), U. S. Navy
Born with a love of the sea honestly inherited from an old sailing master, Williamson has pioneered a new field. He gave to the world its first photographs of the great unknown beneath the surface of the waves.
Early apprenticed as a shipbuilder, he served his time, then abandoned the trade in favor of art. Later he was employed in newspaper work on the Virginian Pilot at the same time that his father announced an invention intended for salvage purposes. This apparatus consisted of a flexible tube extending from a barge on the surface to an observation chamber some distance below. In the invention, Williamson, with an enviable “nose for news,” recognized possibilities for underwater photography.
His first “stills” proved the idea practical and met with instant acclaim by the public. Funds for an expedition to take moving pictures of the ocean’s depths were immediately forthcoming. In 1914 the moving-picture industry was still in its infancy when Williamson sailed for the Bahamas equipped for experimental work.
The first year he filmed over 6,000 feet of submarine scenes; a battle between himself and a shark, undersea forests, and divers working on sunken wrecks. This film had its premiere showing in the Smithsonian Institute, then scored a tremendous hit on Broadway. He had found something new to the world, for, as he himself wrote in an early article:
Except from the lips of divers who have descended on the edges of the coasts to a puny depth of a hundred feet, we are in ignorance of what lies beneath the waves.
Subsequent expeditions filmed productions such as The Submarine Eye and Girl of the Sea. With the experience gained in these endeavors, he felt qualified to film a feature picture, and chose Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Hurricanes, devil fish, and innumerable other difficulties were met and overcome. When presented to the public, during the war, the picture was very successful. As a leading Chicago newspaper of the day said: “If the Kaiser had been the press agent, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea could not have been timed to better advantage.”
Williamson has also accomplished much of an educational and scientific nature. He has made pictorial records of all forms of undersea life in their natural habitat, discovered new species, and furthered the store of oceanographic knowledge. A recent contract required him to furnish numerous underwater exhibits for the Field Museum.
The interesting events which have transpired in over 20 years of this unusual employment are recorded in picturesque style in Williamson’s book. As one reviewer stated, with no intent to pun, “the book can be said not to have a single dry page in it.”