Country Needs New Army to Care for Disabled Veterans, Says Editor, March 23, 1921

It is almost incredible that with all the machinery which the government has for aiding disabled soldiers there are so many thousands of them who are claiming attention and interest form other acoustics. The reason of the dilemma is not difficult to discover. The government has the money for every one of these disabled men. It has the legislation needed to give them succor, but the government is trying to attend to this matter by the usual processes of red tape and by a cumbersome, unwieldy organization in Washington offices, and it is impossible for men in Washington offices to keep in touch with wounded soldiers all over this broad land. What needs to be done is to decentralize this authority, to send men into the field, to scatter them through the hospitals, to come into personal contact with them in order to learn of their needs and their claims.

We are told that compensation claims are piled high in these Washington offices. They have been accumulating for two years. The men who deserve these compensations need the money now and are entitled to it without having to wait longer, and yet they don’t know how much longer still they may have to wait.

This is a matter of popular concern. We owe a great deal to these men who in our steads stood yonder at the front and were shot to pieces. Their government ought to stand before them with uncovered head and ask them what they would have it do unto them. Instead of that, these maimed and blinded and crippled soldiers are struggling with their wounds and injuries and ill health, deprived of their just allowances, lying in hospitals suffering and dying, some of them penniless, we h ear—it’s a lander against the humanity of the American people that such a condition should prevail.

From the editorial page of The Charlotte News, Wednesday afternoon, March 23, 1921