OUR WAR CRIPPLES

Some of our soldiers disabled in action have already been sent home from the war zone to the United States and their numbers will be constantly augmented as the war proceeds. Our obligation to these men does not cease with their discharge from the hospital or even with the payment of their war insurance. We are moved to assist them to start an active and useful life from new beginnings not only by ordinary humanity, but by the confidence with which the men already crippled look to us for aid in this discouraging under-taking. Provision is already being made for the education and employment in the simpler mechanical processes of those not fitted for purely intellectual occupations. Manual training schools and manufacturing establishments, whose careful organization of labor on a large scale enables them permanently to employ crippled men, are to co-operate to do this.

If business concerns primarily interested in profits are willing to make sacrifices to aid the uneducated or mechanically inclined war cripple our schools and colleges created for public service should certainly make especial efforts to assist those capable of mental achievement. Many disabled soldiers who had left college or preparation for college to go to war will complete their college training in the natural course of events. But many more will require special assistance and special arrangements of entrance requirements and the like if they are to receive the mental training needed to place them on an equal competitive basis with other men. To reach such individuals the colleges should take positive measures. The opportunities offered by American universities should be definitely presented to crippled American soldiers qualified to accept them, and sufficient funds withdrawn from less urgent activities to provide for their entire maintenance when necessary. In few other ways can the colleges mitigate so effectively the suffering and losses of war.