last Christmas, and he can say: "I lost these two legs in the Argonne" and the bureau is stopped. This bill is no child of ours, the way it has come over here.

Senator BINGHAM. Would it not be fair to face the issue clearly, rather than becloud the issue by extending the presumptive date to January 1, 1930, and five years from now we will have to extend it to January 1, 1935, which we will probably have to do?

Mr. KIRBY. I think there was passed recently within the past five days by the House, which I assume the Senate will pass, a bill for the appointment of a joint committee of the Senate and House to meet and study and analyze the problem of the veteran looking toward the adoption of a veteran's policy comparable to the national defense act.

Then all these incongruities, and so forth, in this law will be ironed out. At the end of two years-the committee is supposed to report next January; or assuming they get another year and report in two years, or assuming they get two years and report in three years, I assume that committee will come out with a very substantial plan of veterans' relief, which will wipe out many of these inequalities. The time of the presumptive clause will be over. I say two years definitely, but as a result of the deliberations of that joint committee you are going to have a complete plan of veterans' relief.

Senator BARKLEY. Will your organization and the other organizations of veterans be satisfied to suspend the adoption of legislation this year pending that report?

Mr. KIRBY. We anticipated that, Senator. When our support was asked for the joint committee, we backed it on the distinct understanding that it would have no effect on pending legislation. That is our position. Seventy-two of these sick veterans are dying every day, and if you multiply that by 365, and then multiply that by 3, there is no relief in sight for those men. Relief for these men is imperative.

If

Just recently I sent a man to the Veterans' Bureau, largely through my own official influence, for the simple reason that the man had come from Anchorage, Alaska, arrived here yesterday, and was brokeand his name is available, if you want it-and I got that man in Walter Reed Hospital, purely because he had not had anything to eat. you had taken up technically the man's physical disability, he would have stayed out of the hospital. It was only because he had come from Anchorage, Alaska, with tuberculosis, and that he was in the Seventh Infantry, that I was able to influence the bureau. I do not know whether the bureau had the right under the law to do it, but I know the bureau did the decent thing.

If we take three years for this legislation, there are already 6,000 men at Arlington who were in the war-most of them nonserviceand these disabled men need relief, and their children need it.

The proposition is to extend the presumptive clause, so that the children, the veteran, the orphan, and the wife will not turn to a tincup proposition.

The fourth particular proposition that I want to discuss, Senators, is this misconduct clause. I am in full agreement with the director that misconduct might be construed as a man escaping from a guardhouse and being wounded, and so forth, but that was not the intention we had in attempting liberalization.

The direct results of these venereal diseases are not what we are so much concerned with, but one of the great troubles in the adjudication of the claims in the Veterans' Bureau is that alleged claims of misconduct are constantly creeping into the files. Not in all cases, but in a great many cases, where a man has developed N. P., there is a suggestion of venereal disease, or so-called social disease, and it is very often held against the man. It is a terribly hard law to adjudicate.

The claim is made and morally I think it is sound-that we should be pretty stringent about misconduct, and Congress has never passed a law to do differently. With all respect to the man who made that contention, the fact is in the law there is a provision covering misconduct as to so-called vicious habits, but this committee itself has already made the law to take care of some of these men. Men may become blind, helpless, or paralyzed, and you wipe misconduct out in that case.

Senator REED. If I may interrupt, that is on the theory that the community is going to have to take charge of that man anyway, and we do it without quibbling. I think that was the thought. Mr. KIRBY. In order to remove a social menace.

Senator REED. But when we come to the proposition that a man should be paid compensation because of disabilities he incurred, it is not a question of punishment, but awarding him for his misconductthat is what stuck in my craw.

Mr. KIRBY. I realize that when you get into misconduct a lot of people take the moral stand on it. You have probably seen, Senator, a lot of these cases. They are horrible.

Senator REED. I know that.

Mr. KIRBY. The man who gets syphilis and it gets into his system, he is going into blindness, and going into paresis, and he is going to St. Elizabeths, unless he catches it early and is extremely careful.

Another class of cases of misconduct-misconduct is a red flag; just mention it, and he is out. It is against the man all along. The public is afraid of him, and he is a so-called leper, but we have cases coming along where men apparently contracted this disease through experiments. I have in mind a specific case where a man-and I think it was finally sold to the bureau-was placed in a military detail at an alleged disorderly house in this country, I think outside of Chickamauga, outside of Chattanooga, and that man insists that his venereal disease resulted from his detail to that house. He tells a pretty plausible story. He wants his compensation, and is to-day on the way to St. Elizabeths Insane Asylum.

I had a case of another man, a high class student, a junior in college, who told me, and told me with equally apparent honesty, that he contracted it by getting it off of a coca cola bottle he bought overseas. It did not stick very well, because a doctor told me the best way to cure the disease was to put it on ice.

So you have a lot of cases, and they are very pathetic, and, in our judgment, there should be a more liberal attitude on the part of the bureau toward it.

I am inclined to agree, Senator, that we should not go into these cases and give compensation to men when the disease was contracted, or presumed to be contracted in an unorthodox method, as was

112237-30-PT 2-3

expressed on the part of some one, but there are exceptions to that rule.

The Army never had a rule against a man enjoying that particular pleasure. The Army had a rule: "Go and do it all you want to, but take a prophylactic." There was no moral law in the Army against it. Getting back to prohibition, Senator, there was no law in the Army which prohibited a man taking a drink. There was a law against giving a man a drink, but offering and taking it were two different things. So that the Army did not turn its back on so-called misconduct. Somebody described it as a very good business in the Army.

Those, generally, Senators, are the points that we wanted to bring out. This bill was discussed for five weeks in the House, and there is very little that I can say except we do say that we sincerely hope this committee will see its way clear to give more time, and we ask no time limit, but, at least, some extension of time in which these men can sue on their insurance, and that there should be a higher compensation for the literal battle casualties, the men hit in line of duty, and are to-day without their legs and arms, limiting it to the time of hostilities, as in the law, and an extension of the presumptive clause to 1930.

Let me call your attention to this fact:

In that presumptive clause, as written, there is a distinctive limitation after three years that it is repealed. I know the usual contention will be made that if you once get it in the law, you will never get it out, but that was done more in order to permit this joint committee plenty of time to pass on it and decide whether it should be continued permanently. The claim that anything that is put in the veterans' act will never be taken out is not sound. This Government promised every man who was disabled during the war a course of rehabilitation that would put him back in his pre-war work, or some work which he could carry on. The law was later repealed. We have cases now. I have in mind a couple of cases up in northern New York who have been continuously totally disabled since the armistice. Should they be recovered, they won't get the vocational training that a man who got a superficial wound during the war will get. Regardless of the merits or demerits of vocational training, I think a thing which comes in under a string does not mean it has to stay. The country is drifting, or, rather, being driven toward a pension, and this, I think, instead of being a pension will be a manner in which we can postpone a pension, which, in the history of the country, is inevitable. Senator REED. You mean a general pension? Mr. KIRBY. A disability pension.

The third point we make is some liberalization of the misconduct clause, and in connection with the insurance matter, I would urge, if possible, that the committee find some way, whatever means it can find, to thwart the actions of a lot of unscrupulous lawyers in their cruel injustice in leading these men into filing of the suits, and thus congesting the calendar and costing the bureau much money to defend them.

Senator BARKLEY. Mr. Chairman, it was agreed the other day that we wanted the full committee to hear General Hines, and we also want

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). Congressman Rankin, do you desire to be heard?

Congressman RANKIN. I suggest we continue the hearing to another

date.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not mean now.

Senator HARRISON. Let me ask about the joint committee, when, where it was appointed, and who they are.

Senator REED. The bill has not passed the Senate.

Senator HARRISON. You were right, then, when you said it might be passed in three years.

Mr. KIRBY. What I said was that the committee-I assumed that this session of Congress would authorize the appointment of the joint committee, which must report in one year, according to the resolution passed by the House, but assuming that it is three years. before it must report, this prohibition in our presumptive clause stops at three years, on the theory that the joint committee will bring out a permanent policy more substantial than what might be called the makeshift arrangement here.

The CHAIRMAN. I agree with Mr. Kirby that there is a pension coming. There is no doubt about that.

I understand that to-morrow it is impossible for a number of the committee to be present. In fact we have a conference to-morrow. The committee will adjourn until 2 o'clock Monday afternoon, May 12, 1930.

(Whereupon, at 11.45 o'clock a. m., an adjournment was taken until 2 o'clock p. m. Monday, May 12, 1930.)