heads. Sometimes the cause is blackmail. More common than one would expect, is the fact that the young officer, overloaded with debts, has agreed to a marrriage as arranged by his friends. His bride's dowry is to set him free from creditors. He accepts the project, but presently is unable to face the physical union. His horror feminae is not to be fought off, he takes his life. Another element of such suicides in the brotherhood of arms, is the sense of broken ties of the garrison-life henceforth to be solitary, for some regimental "friend" of the benedick. There are many shades and degrees of the uranistic sentiment in such "unsoldierly" mysteries.
Often one meets with a newspaper-reference similar to this one, translated from a journal of the very week in which the authour is writing this chapter:
"No further light can be thrown as yet on the suicide of Lieutenant R— B— last Sunday. The personal and professional affairs of the deceased young man were in good order, and no family matters exist that explain his want of interest in life. The letter to his brother K— B—, in F—, in which Lieutenant B— spoke of himself as the victim of "an incurable nervous disease from which he had long suffered", is contradicted by the dead man's having been examined about four weeks ago for a life-insurance policy, with an excellent report. No one has heard him speak of any sort of nervous or other ill-health. The letter which Lieutenant B— left, addressed to his friend Captain O—, the latter declines to make known. Captain O— wishes it understood that there is no ground for the report that affairs with the other sex are complicated in Lieutenant B—'s death. Lieutenant B— was of most regular habits; did not frequent the society of the opposite sex except under ordinary social conditions. He had many warm friends. The deliberation of the suicide, makes the affair mysterious".
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