Death Begins at Home

Out of the last 200 American seamen who left port with supplies for our troops and factories and for our personal consumption, three won't come back. This is a higher casualty rate than exists in the Army, the Navy, or even the Marines.

The men of these ships work, eat and sleep not only with their boots, but with their life-preservers on. They live from day to day, and count the minutes from sunrise until they can disappear again in the darkness. But even that darkness has not been concealing them from enemy periscopes, while they follow the coastwise routes. The glow from innumerable house and street lights can silhouette the outlines of a ship forty miles out to sea, and submarines work on a twenty-four hour shift.

Cambridge has already switched off its neon signs and painted the tops of its street-lights. The U.T. at eight o'clock looks as if the last show was over. Harvard students have been asked to keep their shades down in lighted rooms, but the results to date have been far from perfect. It may be a nuisance, and it may even block off the evening breeze, but this might be one sacrifice that is worth the effort. It may save a ship and the lives of thirty men.