WHAT IS THE REASON for the failure of the Government’s program for the rehabilitation of disabled soldiers?” is the pointed question put by the leading Republican organ, the New York Tribune. Last April a new director, C. R. Forbes, of Seattle, was appointed by the President, and in August the Sweet Bill was signed, combining the insurance and relief bureaus in the Veterans’ Bureau, yet, as the Tulsa Tribune remarks, “evidence, as to wrongs and abuses seem to pile up faster than evidence of improvement and relief.” President Harding himself has declared that “the man who came back wounded deserves the fullest aid and assistance in our power to give, and I purpose to use all the influence and power that I have to see that he gets it.” Moreover, declares the New York Times, “if there is anything that the people demand with all the sincerity and earnestness of which they are capable, no matter what it shall cost, it is that the disabled soldier must be cared for, put on his feet, or made physically comfortable and easy in his mind for life.”
Despite such assertions, however, a national association of wounded and disabled veterans assembled in Washington a month ago and, selecting Ohio as a typical State, declared in a memorial to the President that “the Government of the United States has provided no hospital facilities of any kind to care for mentally disabled ex-service melt,- and that ” the United States has farmed out the insane ex-service men of Ohio to State asylums which are notoriously overcrowded, under-manned and inadequately equipped to treat and care for them.” These charges, together with the statement that “the tubercular and the non-tubercular are not kept separate,” and that “the State of Ohio is making a profit averaging $300 a year on each patient,” were published in our issue of February 4. What is true in Ohio is true in practically every State in the Union, declared the memorial, “and the pity of it all is that, according to specialists, one-half of these young soldiers could he restored to reason, or socially and economically rehabilitated by prompt medical treatment.”
PRESIDENT HARDING GREETING THE WOUNDED
” The nation can not dodge, and should be ashamed to try to dodge its responsibilities in connection with these men,” asserts the Raleigh News and Observer. They should get “the best care and treatment that science and a wealthy nation can provide,” maintains the New York Evening Mail, thus agreeing with every editorial opinion that has come to our notice. “A country which could make marvelous arrangements for them when they were being prepared to fight can now do equally well when they have paid the penalty of fighting,” contends- The Mail, as it complains of conditions in New York hospitals.
When we look for an explanation of what the Baltimore Sun terms “callous indifference,” we are told by Dr. Haven Emerson, former medical adviser to what is now the Veterans’ Bureau, that “politics are at work”; that “political appointments are being made within the Bureau.” It was Dr. Emerson who advised against making Camp Sherman, at Chillicothe, Ohio, a national hospital center, because “it would prevent contact between the patients and their families, which in most instances is highly desirable.” The hospital plan, we are told by Harold A. Littledale in the New York Evening Post, “later was changed to the ‘national university’ idea, which now is coming in for so much criticism.” This plan also was carried out against the advice of the medical adviser, Dr. Emerson who soon thereafter tendered his resignation. “Polities and medical services,- declares this public health authority, “are incompatible, and the Veterans’ Bureau work is 95 per cent. medical services.”
“But,” explains the Harrisburg Telegraph, as it takes up the defense of Director Forbes, “the task of rehabilitating our wounded soldiers is a tremendous one, and not to be accomplished in a day. Veterans must be content to withhold judgment until Director Forbes has had reasonable time in which to work out his plans.” In complete agreement is the Rochester Post-Express, which thinks “the appointment of Colonel Forbes was a good one. His military record is beyond reproach, and his ability to administer the affairs incumbent upon the office is unquestioned.” Under his regime “a material change for the better has been wrought in the past few months,” we are assured by the Washington Post. As the Harrisburg paper specifically points out:
“Fourteen regional offices have been established throughout the country, and working from these fourteen regional offices are 140 authorized suboffices. The fourteen regional offices will, under rules and regulations prescribed, hear complaints, examine, rate and award compensation claims, grant medical, surgical, dental and hospital treatment, convalescent care and grant vocational training.”
“What is most desirable,” in the opinion of the Springfield Republican, “is that the true perspective of this matter shall not be lost sight of by a one-sided view.” And it is just this sort of view, intimates the Providence Bulletin, that we have been given by Judge Marx, national commander of the disabled veterans’ organization, which presented the memorials to the President. “Judge Marx,” The Bulletin tells us, “is a bitter opponent of the Harding Administration. He finds fault with the Forbes system, but why doesn’t he confer with Director Forbes, point out the mistakes, and work with the Bureau for better conditions?”
The Literary Digest for February 18, 1922