had deserted more than once. The combined experience of social workers
goes to show that a comparatively small number of first deserters make
so complete a break in their marital relations that they are never heard
from again, and that an even smaller number actually start new families
elsewhere, although no statistical proof of this last statement is
available. One social worker of experience says that in her judgment
desertion, instead of being a poor man's divorce, comes nearer to being
a poor man's vacation.

A man who had always been a good husband and father was discharged
from hospital after a long and exhausting illness and returned to
his family--wife and seven children--in their five-room tenement.
Ten days later he disappeared suddenly, but reappeared some two
weeks later in very much better health and ready to resume his
occupation and the care of his family. His explanation of his
apparent desertion was that he was unable to stand the confusion of
his home and "had needed rest." He had "beaten his way" to
Philadelphia and visited a friend there.

The reporter of the foregoing remarks that it illustrates "unconscious
self-therapy," and that the patient's disappearance might have been
avoided if the services of a good medical-social department had been
available at the hospital where the man was treated.

It is more difficult to justify the thirst for experience of another
deserting husband who came to the office of a family social agency after
an absence of a few months, with effusive thanks for the care of his
family and the explanation that he "had always wanted to see the West,
and this had been the only way he could find of accomplishing it."