one in which he has unconsciously mirrored his own ideals of
honorable obligation, as well as one which presents a wholesome
lesson to young soldiers who have taken an oath to do faithful
service to a nation.

It is a story with a moral so subtly expressed that every soldier
or sailor who reads it will think seriously of it if the
temptation to such disloyalty should enter his mind. This story of
the young man who tried to desert at Salonika may well have a
heartening influence upon all men in uniforms who waver in the
path of duty--especially in these days of vast military operations
when a whole world is in arms. It belongs in patriotic literature
by the side of Edward Everett Hale's "The Man Without a Country."
The motif is the same--that of obligation and service and loyalty
to a pledge.

In "The Deserter" Mr. Davis does not reveal the young soldier's
name, for obvious reasons, and the name of the hotel and ship in
Salonika are likewise disguised. It is part of the art of the
skilful story-writer to dress his narrative in such a way as to
eliminate those matter-of-fact details which would be emphasized
by one writing the story as a matter of news. For instance, the
Hotel Hermes in Mr. Davis's story is the Olympos Palace Hotel, and
the _Adriaticus_ is the Greek steamer _Helleni_. The name of the
young soldier is given as "Hamlin," and under this literary
"camouflage," to borrow a word born of the war, the story may be
read without the thought that a certain definite young man will be
humiliated by seeing his own name revealed as that of a potential
deserter.