Discarded Warships.

New York Times 100 years ago today, August 9, 1913:
Physician Suggests Using Them for Tuberculous Children.
To the Editor of The New York Times:
    In a Sunday article on our obsolete fleet you give a long list of more or less useless vessels awaiting "the target range or the auction block and the junk pile." Some of them are destined to rust away in navy yards nominally as units in reserve fleets."
    Why could not some of these vessels be put to the use that the Italian Minister of Marine is making of three old warships? He is planning to transform them into sanitoria for the treatment of tuberculous children. The results of sea air treatment at Sea Breeze and on the floating hospitals of St. John's Guild in the case of non-pulmonary lesions in children are familiar to many.
    In view of our inadequate facilities for the proper management of tuberculous and pre-tuberculous conditions in children, why would it not be feasible to emulate the example of the progressive Italian statesman?
        ARTHUR C. JACOBSON.
        Brooklyn, N.Y., Aug, 8, 1913.