certain disabilities or combinations of disabilities. All men with similar disabilities fare alike as regards disability compensation. In theory, this compensation is to equalize the injured man between his disabled capacity and what he would otherwise have been able to earn. In fact, it does not do so, but there was no other way to arive at a means of dealing equally and equitably with all injured men except on the basis of averages. To do otherwise would be to reopen the Pandora's box of evils and scandals of private and partisan pension legislation, from which the country has suffered so greatly in the past, and still suffers, with a host of undeserving beneficiaries absorbing millions of dollars from the public treasury.

The Government, realizing that equal treatment under the compensation law was bound to produce some measure of inequality in individual cases, next proceeded to furnish the man himself with the means of counteracting his individual loss by so educating him that there would be absolute equality of opportunity among all who had suffered impairment for the Nation's sake in other words, that each man would be put in a position to utilize to the utmost the capabilities remaining to him.

The effect of the combination of disability compensation and vocational reeducation is, in the majority of cases, to restore the man to civil life in a better condition as regards income and prospects of progress and development than he was before he donned a uniform in response to the call for national service. The further effect is that there will be no more semi-mendicant veterans, exhibiting their wounds and craving compassion and help; the dis

abled of this war will help themselves.

There will be no more pensioned men in semi-charitable jobs; the redeemed disabled will be given regular pay for regular and efficient work. There will be no more burdens on the communities; for these men will pay their taxes and bear their share of whatever other burdens the community may have to shoulder. True, these men may be minus an arm or a leg or deficient in health in one way or another, but these things will be merely incidents of their individual make-up and no more the cause of economic insufficiency than the color of hair or eyes or any other purely personal characteristic.

It is a healthier state of mind for the communities and the Nation to be in. This modern conception of the Nation's duty to the individual who serves it is bound to have its reaction in a finer sense of obligation and responsibility of the individual generally toward his Government, and this in turn will serve as a basis for a heightening of the ideals of govern

ment.

CHAPTER IV

WHAT THE BELLIGERENT NATIONS HAVE UNDERTAKEN

The State's regard for the individual enhanced by the war Restoration of the disabled a national policy of all the belligerents Economic value of the disabled Restoration policy of the United States - Inclusion of the disabled of industry — Evolution of a new social policy Its further possibilities.

Never in all the roll of years has the individual citizen been so much the object of regard and solicitude on the part of his Government as since the Great War began; nor has there ever before been exhibited such paternal interest in the welfare of workers generally in all lines, and particularly in those related to the vast and complex industry of making war. Nations have awakened suddenly to the actual truth of the saying that the very foundation stones of a country are its men. Consequently there has been a hurried shifting of position in every belligerent nation to conform national conduct with the new conception, not only in the attitude of interest toward its men before throwing them into the maelstrom of conflict, but also in the development of salvage and conservation for those who emerge, even though they may be useless for the battle line.

No other war has approached this in magnitude of requirements of men for actual fighting in the field or of material necessary properly to munition and supply them. The truth early began to dawn upon the Allied peoples that it was to be a struggle to the

death for national existence and development against a crafty, powerful foe who had emerged from the nebulae of nations as a warring, plundering, aggressive, unscrupulous tribe, and who had held through its history the same ideals ever since Caesar thrashed Ariovistus and drove his rapacious hordes back across the Rhine from the very fields from which the Allies have lately ejected descendants of those same Teutons. The Allied nations at last came to the proper conception that it would be a war of exhaustion; the uttermost effort of each was required, and the cause upheld by the most resources and reserves of industrial strength was ultimately to triumph.

A movement which started originally as a private, patriotic effort on the part of a few individuals to extend charity to scattered and destitute disabled soldiers has became in the short space of three years the policy of nations, but not with the same object in view. The belligerent nations speedily developed the broader and the correct view, which is, primarily, justice to the disabled man. It was suddenly found also that this conception coincided with the best interests of Governments.

The demonstration was complete and overwhelming that an enormously potential reserve of strength had previously been overlooked by the Governments, and that their disabled soldiers were full of essential values hitherto unsuspected. It became clear that these men were of quite as much use, disabled and retrained, as they were before they suffered incapacitating injuries, and in many instances became. of more real value to the State. A disabled man was able, after undergoing training, to take the place

of an uninjured man engaged in some essential phase of war industry behind the lines, thus adding enormously to the strength of the nation by providing entirely unexpected and unlooked-for reserves of vital resistance. Instead of being put out of action and discarded as a unit of strength to his country, the disabled man was replaced in the front lines by a fresh, uninjured man, and at the same time the place of the uninjured man behind the lines was taken by the disabled soldier. The process of restoration multiplied the fighting ability of the nation.

It was also recognized by the belligerents that by the addition of a considerable body of men trained in trades, industries and processes, even though not immediately related to the business of making war, the industrial life of the nation would be maintained to a larger extent than would otherwise be possible, and that, this being true, at the conclusion of hostilities. the transition from a war to a peace basis would be a less violent reaction. These disabled men, made over into skilled artisans, mechanics or experts in the hundreds of other occupations requiring a trade or technical education, would also replace in large measure the loss to the nation of men in those lines who had been killed outright or died of wounds or disease. Thus, by having its trade, manufacturing and business strength reinforced for the critical period of industrial and commercial readjustment at the end of the war, the nation would be in better position as regards reconstruction and the resumption and recovery of business would be accelerated. So it became apparent that by the retraining of the disabled, every man thus taught successfully was transformed.