To Soldiers and Their
Dependents
When this country called for some millions of its young men,
and, for that matter, some almost of middle life, to give up business, to give
up home and to give up all prospects of the future and offer their lives on the
battlefield to save the rest of us from being overrun by German barbarism, no
man who was called to the colors stopped to consider his future when the war
was over. Nevertheless, the country placed itself under a moral obligation to
these men and their families to see that they should not suffer financially by
reason of their sacrifice.
We owe it now to the men who were called to this great work
to see that they have every consideration which the nation can offer in
overcoming the loss of business or the loss of health. And the families of
those who died in camp or on the battlefield should not be permitted to suffer
by reason of the loss of their support. The nation is too rich to be niggardly.
Our accumulation of wealth should prove a curse to us if we do not deal with
the utmost liberality with the men who were called into the army, and with the
families of those who died or were permanently invalided.
The government is proposing to train the maimed to be
self-supporting. It is taking the men who have been blinded and educating them
to do certain manual labor. But among these blinded and maimed me were many who
had never done manual labor. They were men of education and of business
affairs. To put them down to the dull drudgery of making baskets or kindred
work as a means of support would be a serious reflection upon the honor of the
American people. The government should give them every opportunity for
education and for training for some work which would keep them from idleness,
not so much for the money which they would make out of it, but for a certain
degree of independence which comes with employment. But no man not accustomed
to that kind of work should be made dependent upon it through the failure of
the government to abundantly care for him.
The families that were dependent upon these permanently
invalided or maimed men or upon those who died in camp or on the battlefield
should likewise be made independent by an income for life which would at least
enable them to live in comfort. A pension of $20 or $30 a month to a mother or
a wife of a soldier who died for his country and upon whom she was dependent is
picayunish and beneath the honor of the people of this country.
The insurance plan devised by the Treasury Department was a
wise move, but it should not be regarded as in any respect whatever the full
duty of the Government. The maximum insurance of $10,000 on a soldier’s life
will give to the beneficiary in the way in which the Government pays it about
$57 a month for 20 years. That helps, but it is a very small sum compared with
the value of that man’s life even from the financial standpoint to those
dependent upon him. In a well-ordered family, when one member becomes
permanently invalided the other members regard it as their privilege and duty
to make the sick one comfortable through life. The American people should
regard themselves as a part of one great family, and every invalid soldier
should be treated in the same way.
The nation is very wisely planning the building of highways
and the drainage of land and seeking to turn thousands of soldiers to farm
life. None of this work should be done or even for a moment considered from the
standpoint of being done by the soldiers as soldiers. If any of the army men
want to take up the outdoor life of road building and reclamation work, they
should be given the opportunity of doing so, but to consider the employment of
them as soldiers in work of this kind—a suggestion that has been made—would be
absurd.
With probably more than one-third of the world’s accumulated
wealth, with our wealth increasing at a rate that we can scarcely comprehend,
with resources for continued development beyond anything known elsewhere, we
can afford to assume burdens in the maintenance of the maimed soldiers and of
the families of those who died, and we can afford to co-operate with the
soldiers in getting them started in life again on a scale which no other nation
in the world could consider. These men have given from one or two years of the
very best of their lives to saving us. They have given up business, they have
lost opportunities which would have come to them, while the rest of the people
stayed at home and made money by filling the very places of the men called to
the war.
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