The National tribune., 1884-06-05
Whore to Begin,


dication of pension claims is largely due to
the enforcement of technical rules by the
Pension Office, which are without warrant
in law, and which it is within the power
of the Commissioner to either modify or
abrogate entirely. Among these rules is
that which requires the claimant to furnish
proof Of physical soundness prior to enlist
ment, and the effect of its operation, we are
persuaded, has been not only to put claim
ants to unnecessary expense and trouble in
proving their claims, but in some cases to
absolutely debar them from the enjoyment
of the pensions to which they are entitled.
1t would be strange if it were not so, for
twenty-three years have elapsed since the
first volunteers were mustered in; compare
lively few of our veterans now reside in the
neighborhood where they enlisted, and ow-
ing to the death, removal, or disappearance
of witnesses, it is frequently impossible and
nearly always difficult to obtain the required
evidence. How many of our non-soldier
readers, if called on to show by medical or
lay testimony that they were in sound
health IN certain year, nearly quarter Of
a century ago, could furnish satisfactory
evidence of the fact? How many would be
likely even to recall the name of the physi-
clan, unless they had been for some time
under his treatment, or without prolonged
and costly search, be able to ascertain the
present whereabouts of their friends and
acquaintance of that day? Very few, we
fancy, Jet it should be great deal easier
for them to do SO than for our veterans, who
by reason of their absence from home dur
ing the war and their subsequent migra-
tons, long ago lost track of their associates
Of ante-bellum days.
But this is the least of the reasons-this
difficulty of obtaining eyidenee-why proof
of soundness prior to enlistment ought not
to be exacted. This requirement, we hold,
in the pension law itself VIII any one
venture to affirm that there is aught in that
law to warrant the assumption OF the Pen
sion Office that the armies of the Union
were chiefly composed of inyalids and that
upon the soldier, therefore, should be the
burden of proof that he was not physically
unsound? Is there any fact better estab-
lished than that the Union armies were not
so constituted, but embraced the flower of
American manhood, the Drawn and muscle
Of the Nation? And was ii not for the express
purpose of excluding from them all save the
sound and able-bodied that the Government
required the soldier to submit to the most
searching examination at the hands of its
| own surgeons before admitting him to its
service? If that is the fact, is not the Gov
eminent forever estopped thereby from rails
ing the question of physical soundness at
date OF enlistment in the absence of an adj
verse record, and is not the present ruling
of the Pension Office in positive contraven-
ton of the intent and spirit of existing
law?
Why, then, should it longer be enforced
1t has been proposed to abolish it by act OF
Congress, but since it does not derive its
authority from the statutes and is merely a
survival Of the practice of the Pension Office
under former administrations, we see no
reason why any appeal should be taken to
that body. 1t is within the power of the
Commissioner himself to at once rescind
and abrogate this unjust and unreason-
able requirement and publicly announce
that hereafter the presumption will be
as from the first it should have been, that
the soldier was sound at date of muster
in. Let Commissioner Dudley rise, then, to
the level Of the occasion and of his own accord
render that justice to our veterans which
Congress is otherwise, sooner or later, certain
to accord by declaratory act annulline
this illegal requirement.
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