Peculiar though it may seem, it has taken us eighteen years to finally discover who won and lost the World War. The Allies may insist they were victorious in the “war-to-end-wars” and point to the Versailles Treaty as proof of Germany’s defeat. On the contrary, Germany has ignored the Versailles agreement with an arrogance reminiscent of Hohenzollern ambitions. Under Adolph Hitler, Germany has reconstructed its war machine and today that country is as great a threat to world peace as it was prior to 1914.
In recognition of the stark, brutal truth, we are forced to admit that the World War was a source of profit only to the ammunitions makers while the soldiers—the soldiers of Germany and Austria, as well as the soldiers of England, France and the United States—are the only ones who have suffered losses that can never be repaired.
The men whom we mobilize into armies of robots, artificially imbued with a fierce desire for blood, not only lose out in the economic battle for self-preservation, but they lose step with civilization as a whole, even if they are lucky enough to come back with arms and legs intact. Men whom we train to be killers, in time of war, are never again the same individuals whom we draft from the fields, from the factories or the shops before they become human machines of war.
When war was declared on April 6, 1917, we immediately proceeded to build “murder factories,” or cantonments, in all sections of the country. We took boys out of school, young men from behind counters and husky farm lads from the wheat fields, and placed them in the hands of professional soldier instructors in these various assembly plants. During the course of several weeks of rigorous training, we remolded these young Americans. With the tools of severe discipline, strict military supervision, soldier psychology and hate-provoking propaganda, we transformed four million lovable, easy-going American youths into grim-jawed, determined, blood-thirsty killers. They were carefully coached in the use of the bayonet and even told how to grunt and swear as they rushed at a helpless victim. Hard boiled sergeants showed these mild mannered youngsters how to withdrawn a bayonet from the body of a slain enemy with the least possible delay. A hob-nailed boot on the chest of a prostrate body, with a sharp, upward twist, they were told, would do the trick with neatness and dispatch.
With the aid of liberty Bond orators, especially trained war department speakers and specialists in propaganda, we filled the minds of these young men with a loathing for the enemy. By the time they reached the front lines in France, after night long hikes and hungry marches in the rain and of Flanders, they knew the world was mad and they want mad with it. Then came the weary days and nights of scuttling back and forth in rain-filled trenches, sleeping in the slime and the muck of rat-infested dugouts, the constant fear of either a barrage from their own guns, or the guns of the enemy, ceaseless bombardments and deadly gas. Numbed with fright, their ears deafened by the constant roar of big guns, their nerves wrecked by the shock and concussion of exploding shells, these men caught in the cauldron of war, lost their youth almost over night.
Finally, the Armistice brought this havoc to a conclusion. Man had spent his wrath and his strength. Even the professional soldiers who had lived their entire lives as disciples of the war gods were disheartened and soul weary.
We brought these men back to America and shipped them to the cantonments nearest their homes. In less than sixty seconds after they received their final discharge, we again regarded them as civilians. Although they were given intensive training in the art of becoming killers, we gave them no help or training in their readjustment, mentally and psychologically, to the ways of peace. All too abruptly, Uncle Sam gave each of them an honorable discharge and a railroad ticket. We sent them back to their parents, and their loved ones, still dazed and numbed by the horror and chaos of war. There were no orators, no lecturers, no psychologists nor philosophers to help these men understand the transformation that had taken place within themselves, or the changes wrought by the war upon society as a whole. The vast majority of those who made up our armed forces, literacy tests revealed, were mentally incapable of making this diagnosis for themselves. They were young, provincial, unsophisticated and unsuspecting when they were taken from their homes. While they were gone they learned only one thing—the lust for blood.
International bankers may have lost their investments, nations may have lost territories, great military figures may have lost their prestige, and civilians, of both the Allied countries and Germany, may have lost some sleep. But the man who battled with the elements at sea, or crept forward on their stomachs under a hail of bullets, suffered the only irreparable losses that wars create when they sacrificed their bodies, their normal outlook on life and their youth.
Today we have more than a hundred government hospitals filled to capacity with those lads we sent back to civilian life following the Armistice. They are no longer boys in years but of the average age of 45. Mentally and physically, the great majority of them might as well be 60 and 70. Approximately 350,000 World War veterans are receiving help and care from the federal government in the form of compensation for disabilities that have interfered with complete rehabilitation. These men, however, compose only a small percentage of those two million overseas veterans whose shattered bodies and wrecked nervous systems are constant reminders of the experiences they underwent eighteen years ago. In addition to those drawing so-called pensions, there are more than 500,000 World War veterans suffering from disabilities that are either directly or indirectly traceable to their services in the A.E.F. but for whom the federal government has neither a sympathetic care nor a helping hand. This total is augmented as the passing years rob other veterans of their powers of resistance to disease and neurotic ailments.
Immediately following the World War, the federal government discovered it was necessary to adopt certain rules and regulations in dealing with the disability problems of four million veterans. These rules and regulations, embodying certain general principles, have been applied to World War veterans as a whole and without regard to the individual veteran’s type or length of service.
In the beginning, Uncle Sam decreed that every veteran entitled to disability compensation would have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, through Army records and affidavits, that his disability was directly the result of his service. Officials responsible for these regulations undoubtedly felt the treasury of the United States demanded such safeguards against fraud and deception. To a degree, they were right. Among four million human beings, it is only natural that a certain percentage will possess knavish instincts and cheating impulses. This holds true if these four million human beings are soldiers, bankers, lawyers, farmers, doctors or even ministers of the gospel. Segregate four million people in any section of the United States and you are certain to find a similar percentage of thieves and forgers, murderers and crooks, income tax evaders and grafting public officials.
In applying these strict rules and regulations to a group of men who were suddenly taken from their homes, crowded into the holds of ocean-going ships and reached across the seas to a foreign country, where they were told to kill or be killed, there are certainly some grounds for tolerance and understanding, even at the sacrifice if economy. For about two years, our government naturally showed a desire in this direction. In 1930, Congress enacted a law known as the “Disability Compensation Act.” It was created for the aid and assistance of World War veterans unable to provide legal proof and testimony that would convince the federal government their disabilities were actually incurred while in the service. Those who conceived this humane act recognised that the bookkeeping facilities of the A.E.F. were far from perfect, that the A.E.F. was primarily concerned with winning the war and not with the maintenance of records and that the individual veteran was not to be blamed for the inefficiency of former plumbers, or cowboys, or butchers acting as company adjutants or field clerks. They recognized the fact that Companies and Divisions were moved from one point to another under cover of darkness. They recalled that sometimes for days these men were out of touch even with their food kitchens, and their munition supplies, to any nothing of their bookkeeping equipment.
This law also took into consideration the fact that thousands of veterans suffered from hunger and exposure, in the cold and in the rain, in a way that left no immediate marks on their bodies. Any number of front line veterans will testify that they were not always warned of the presence of gas. The poisonous gasses let loose by the Germans had a vicious habit of seeking low places. Many a doughboy suddenly jumped for cover and protection into the pit of a shell hole, only to find it choked with gas, deadly in effect. At times these men caught only a whiff of these vaporous poisons—not enough to overcome them completely or force them to seek first aid. Instead, they sputtered and coughed, and kept on fighting. Many a veteran even refused to confess to a touch of gas for fear his comrades might question his courage, or suspect him of building up an alibi that might take him to safety in the rear. Others feared a trip to a field hospital would mean separation from the payroll and buddies who provided the last human link with what was left of civilization. Every A.E.F. veteran will recall the loneliness and hardships of soldiers who became casuals, attached to strange outfits and perhaps forever separated from their own organized units.
Back in 1917 and 1918, the man of the A.E.F. were healthy, vigorous and in the prime of life. If they came through a skirmish with their limbs in place, they felt sure their stamina would help them overcome the dangers of infection in a slight shrapnel wound or a whiff of gas. They preferred to beg for a dab of iodine, or a couple of C.C. pills, rather than risk losing the companionship of their own comrades.
None of these youths ever suspected that advancing years would weaken resistance powers to shattered nerves or weakened lungs. If they did, it never occurred to them that Uncle Sam would some day say, “There is nothing on your service record to support your claim. We have no legal evidence, and no witnesses, to prove you inhaled this gas, or this growing infection in your leg is an old shrapnel wound.”
None of Uncle Sam’s doughboys ever thought that he would have to have a group of eye-witnesses to testify they saw him lying for hours in a rain filled shell hole while doing patrol duty; none of Uncle Sam’s doughboys, during the bombardment of Verdun, or in the midst of the Argonne slaughter, ever paused to reflect on the necessity of having a personal audience or a camera to observe every act he performed, although the heaviest fighting usually took place in pitch darkness and it was worth a court-martial even to light a cigarette.
The law that took all these facts into consideration, the Disability Compensation Act, lived less than three years. It became effective in 1930 and in 1933, was repealed by the so-called Economy Act, designed to “maintain the credit of the nation.” With one stroke of the pen, our lawmakers suddenly decided that 500,000 World War veterans, suffering from disabilities that made it impossible for them to work even if they could find employment, would have to shift for themselves. At that particular time, the country was in the grip of a sudden hysterical demand for economy. In response to this clamor, the politicians decided that political shrewness required action. They armed the budget up one side and down the other, searching for an expenditure that could be eliminated and still only antagonize that group which represented the smallest organised band of voters. They picked on the veteran.
Despite all the predictions of panic and calamities, the reduction in veteran expenditures was the only major step taken to reduce the costs of the federal government. As soon as this was accomplished, the fad for economy became unpopular and was forgotten by the politicians. On the contrary, they immediately launched upon a spending spree that would put the traditional drunken sailor to shame. For example, we threw 500,000 veterans, each of them disabled physically, into the streets and took away their compensation, ranging from $12 to $40 a month. We turned around and created the Civilian Conservation Corps, with jobs for 300,000 boys and young men, for a flat wage of $30 a month. We repudiated the man who was physically unable to take care of himself, and who had proved by actual service his right to expect a favor from the federal government. We took to our hearts, and to our pocketbooks, the young and physically able individual whose only claim for favorable consideration from Uncle Sam was the fact that he happened to be living within the confines of the United States.
The circumstances that made the Disability Compensation Act both logical and humane were by no means repealed when the law itself was wiped from the statutes. Those same circumstances exist today in even a greater degree. Because of these conditions, the American people may just as well resign themselves to the fact now that sooner or later we must have a general pension act that will provide care and compensation for World War veterans suffering from disabilities that make it impossible for these men to take care of themselves.
This World War veterans pension act is inevitable. Its advent is as certain as the dawn of tomorrow. The politicians who prefer to confine federal expenditures to appropriations that can be divided among their campaign contributors, can howl as they please. The United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Economy League, the Manufacturers Association, the American Liberty League, and the many other groups that are anxious to keep down federal expenditures in order to keep income taxes at a minimum, know that the demand for a World War pension act is on the horizon. Down in their hearts they also know, despite all the opposition they may be able to promote, that a World War pension act will eventually be enacted.
That group of industrial leaders, bankers, and others commonly regarded as representative of “big business,” the individuals who compose the memberships of the organizations named above, are fiercely opposed to a World War pension act because the burden of cost naturally be met through taxation. Uncle Sam derives the major portion of his revenue through income taxes. Every step to increase governmental expenses is a threatened increase in income taxes.
Big Business insists the federal government is not responsible for the care and welfare of America’s disabled veterans and these men must either care for themselves, or depend upon the charity they can get from relatives, or their local communities. With the hope of protecting themselves against an increase in income taxes, those who oppose the suggestion of a World War pension prefer to discredit the veteran, his sacrifices and the services he rendered to the nation in time of war by castigating him as a “treasury raider” and a “parasite upon the body politic.”
When congress eventually enacts a World War pension act, the responsibility of veteran welfare will be placed upon the shoulders of the federal government where it properly belongs. These men were drafted for the protection of the nation as a whole—and not to defend the boundary lines of any particular township, city or state. It therefore becomes the duty of the nation, as a whole, to share the costs of war and the care of its disabled soldiers. This is not only a moral obligation. It is a sound so economic policy that divides the burden of cost between all taxpayers in all sections of the country. It is neither fair, nor equitable, to force any one particular state, and its citizens, to assume the major burden of this expense.
In the eighteen years since the Armistice, World War veterans have moved from one state to another, seeking climatic conditions that are best suited to their health. In the southwest alone, thousands of veterans from other sections of the country have settled to live in the only climate that offers relief from tubercular afflictions. There is no reason why the taxpaying citizens of Arizona and New Mexico should be forced to assume the responsibility for disabled veterans who have moved to their states from every other part of the country. After having lived for years, and paid taxes, in Pennsylvania or New York, thousands of veterans have moved to other states in search of employment, or for some other reason. The same condition holds true in every corner of the country. As a result, one state may have a large veteran population while a neighboring state may have comparatively few.
There is one inescapable fate in the aftermath of every war. The bill must be paid. It is inevitable that the people themselves must pay that bill. This expense may be met either directly or indirectly through federal state or local taxation or charity. We have not yet reached that stage in America where people are left to die or suffer in the streets. If disabled veterans are unable to get help from the federal government, they will be forced to turn to local agencies. Nevertheless, the people will pay. If these veterans are left to charity, the care of veteran organizations, the American Red Cross, county and state poor farms and hospitals—the burden of cost still rests upon the individual citizen. However, unless this cost is shared by every taxpayer in the country, we saddle the expense upon the shoulders of a few, within the confines of certain countries and states. By dividing this cost between taxpayer’s as a whole, the proportionate share of each taxpayer’s contribution will be that much smaller. This deduction involves no mysterious arithmetical computations and no complicated theories. The problem is national in scope. The solution is simple. The sooner this fact is accepted by the American people at large, the more quickly will we be able to dispose of our disabled veteran problem and definitely remove it from the field of politics.
Under existing conditions, and even after we have given our disabled veterans the consideration they deserve, the soldiers who took part in the world war will still be the only real losers in that unforgettable conflict between nations.