SACK OF WASHINGTON

Reviewing the history of recent bonus lobbies, one comes to the regrettable conclusion that the G.A.R. was composed of a bunch of pikers. Hospitalization, vocational training, allowances for dependents, preferential selection in government service, a quarter of a billion discharge bonus at the end of the war-this was only a start. So, in 1924 they got the adjusted-service certificates over a presidential veto, later, loans on these policies, and in 1930 compensation for disabilities incurred after the war-to name only their chief gains.

The picture is not a pretty one, honeycombed as it is with special privileges, rottenness, and graft. But the finishing touches are yet to be added. News from Washington indicates that the "veterans" (many of whom almost reached the Atlantic scaboard) are determined to slice off their last chunk of federal funds by demanding immediate payment of certificates which fall due in 1944.

From Harding's time onward it has been one of the chief duties of presidents to veto bonus legislation. But $3000 a head for each soldier killed or wounded in the war is not enough tribute, according to the beneficiaries, the living. "Gimme, gimme", is the unending cry of the veterans, Who for the most part never saw a German shell. "I wore a uniform, didn't I".

Today Patman and Vinson, the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars have setting the difference about the method of dividing the spoils. The new promising near being exerted as Congress is more concerted, more powerful than ever before. It is no longer a question of Congress gracefully going through the motions and then pointing to a Roosevelt or Hoover veto and declaring its impotency. It is perhaps reasonable to count upon another Roosevelt veto but the question is whether one out of three of our Senators is sane, staunch, . . . and patriotic.