This Issue and the Pacific Fleet
By Editor
One of our departments in this issue, the Missions, has been crowded out to make room for other matter. Several good articles were of necessity laid over; they will appear later. Many will purchase this paper for the illustrations it contains. They will get their money's worth. Others will buy it for the statistics and information it offers the reader; and the information will be cheaply purchased. Still others will desire the religious and spiritual instruction and helpfulness contained in its pages; and spiritual gifts and blessings can not be valued in money. From any one of the three view-points the paper should be desired by the mass of the people. The latest program announced as this paper closes its forms is that the fleet will reach Santa Cruz, May 1, leave there May 4, reaching San Francisco May 6. The fleet will enter the Golden Gate in single line formation, hold a direct course to north of Alcatraz, passing to the west of Goat Island, make a complete turn in shore on the San Francisco side of the Bay, and drop anchor, in division formation, in a space reserved opposite Potrero Point. Receptions and official visits will follow. The next day a grand parade in the city; Friday, May 8, an off-day for officers and marines; May 9, a grand review of the fleet by Secretary Metcalf, illumination of ships in the evening; May 10, children's day on the fleet, etc., etc., etc., up to May 16. There will be entertainments and banquets galore to the officers. Surely they will need steel-armored, asbestos-lined stomachs. The gastronomical things to be endured in this post-Lenten season will be worse than the battle of Manila or the defeat of Cervera at Santiago, and attended with far more risk. We pity the men of weak digestion. There will be joy among the lads of the navy to "get home," as some have called it. That is, during weeks of this voyage they have been calling at foreign ports. Some of them have expressed it as getting back "into God's country." We suppose the natives of every land feel thus as regards their own country and people. Not a few of the boys will find relatives and friends to greet them in the California cities. We wish them all joy in the meeting. Every lad of them will be met by other classes, who will welcome him as the cat does the mouse, as the spider does the fly. For weeks they have been spreading their nets and perfecting their lures. They will welcome the fleet that they may prey upon the men. Greedy harpies and ghouls and satyrs and sirens are they. They are waiting to suck your life-blood, destroy your character, that they may get your money. They will meet you with smiling faces and full glasses; they will ply you with liquor till sense and reason are gone; they will lure to gambling hells till the last cent passes from pocket to till, the brain is maudlin from drink, and if you were alone, you would be thrust out into the cold street to lie in the gutter. They will come in the forms of garishly-dressed, impudent-faced, tempting women, who have sold themselves to sin, to lead men to death for gold. "War is hell," but a worse hell will meet the boys of the navy in the man-wrecking, body-wrecking, soul-wrecking dens of vice and iniquity in San Francisco. Would to God the men might be saved from the multiple curse which yawns for them. Would that every saloon, every gambling-den, every bawdy house, might be closed. But they will not be, and the marines must meet temptation and tempter in their manhood or lack of manhood, and resist the devil or weakly yield to his lures. There is strength to stand in Jesus Christ; may they find it. It was the wisest man who said that he is greater who controls his own spirit than he who takes a city.