Evening star., 1915-07-25
HOw Ffance CareS@& &
her 6erB|indHerOeS ~

4 tHc grim CofHucS OF tne
try of war. One is voluminous.
appalling in extent. filled with thou
sands upon hundreds of thousands of
names Of "the men who won't come
back"
The other. SO jealously guarded. is in
considerable in point of size. The
names 1t bears are numbered merely by
the hundreds. Yet. small as 1t is by
comparison with the mighty roll of the
dead. 1t bears terrible import. for this
fs the awful list OF those who have
given. not their lives. but their eyes, to
France, the men whom the fortunes of
war have stricken blind.
OF all the hideous fates that can be-
fall soldier. none is more blighting,
more heartbreaking. more profoundly
pathetic, than the loss of sight. Worse
than capture and imprisonment worse
than amputation of arm or leg. worse
than lifelong Disagreement, even
worse. at the outset. than swift death
II Is the one crowning misfortune that
seems capable of robbing the French
fighting man of the indomita BILE spirit
which Is his.
And the black lot of the blinded SOL
disr is so instantly arresting so poig-
nantly provocative of sadness and hor-
ror in the hearts of every man and
woman who comes face to face with it
that France fears to learn the truth
about the hundreds to whose share it
has fallen.
So the lists of the blind are never
published, but rest in seclusion at the
war office. side by side with those of
the myriad dead. Only the families and
friends of these hapless ones learn of
their great affliction. The nation as
whole has sufficient sadness without
this additional drop being added to its
cup Of bitterness.
And no one outside official circles can
say how many blinded soldiers there
are in France today. any more than any
one can state exactly how many of
Frances fighters have fallen in battle
since last August
Countless guesseS have been hazard
cd on this score Some alarmists have
fmagtned that there are many as six
thousand men now scattered through
the hospitals and garrisons of the re-
public who will never see again. Other
estimates. more conservative and orob
ably more trustworthy. have it that
there are today in France fifteen hun
dred blind soldiers
One thing only, however, can be
stated with any certainty. The present
previous known conflict Men do most
Of their fighting at long range in the
trenches where the only exposed por-
tion Of the body is the head. An enor-
NOUS percentage of head wounds is the
inevitable result. And where there are
head wounds there is blindness.
Approximately half of the cases Of
blindness in the French army are
caused by a bullet passing through the
temples and cutting the optic nerve. In
former wars, before the small caliber,
steel-jacketed bullet came into use.
such q wound spelled death, not blind
ness But the modern rifle ball does its
sinister work SO cleanIy and bores so
fne q hole from temple to temple that
many of its victims are saved from
an unmarked grave on the battlefield
only to face a living death in lifelong
darkness
Shrapnel and the high-explosive shell,
too are numbering their sightless vic
Tins by the hundreds. and between the
work of these and the deadly long
range rifle of modern warfare many
Of Frances soldiers have been rendered
blind that the country. officially and
unofhcially. has come face TO face with
the necessity of taking extraordinary
measures to make life bearable for
them.
The blinded soldier presents a tragic
0H0OlSn. Is a pitldDie plight III
which he fnds himself, when. with head
svathed in bandages, he learns finally
frcr. the lips of Red Cross nurse or
army surgeon that his eyes are gone
Only a few hours. days or weeks have
elapsed since he was numb among
the picked fighting men of his coun-
try and was chosen to fill post in the
Arst-line trenches by virtue of his
physical powers, his youth and his self
reliant efficiency.
Now he finds himself a cropping. help
less. aimless creature. incapa BILE of TAX
ing three certain steps forward. tended
as q newborn babe. fed with a spoon,
hemmed in with walls of utter dark
ness and isolated from all the world
except for communication of sound and
feeling.
II Is in this hopeless condition that
the French government. which has
partly undertaken the responsb bility Of
his salvation. finds him when surgeons
and nurses have done their part in
fastening the healing of his wounds
The nrst thing the government then
does for him is to present him with a
g It goes. is very well. for a little
money stretches long way in France.
4 Partisan of the lower middle classes
can. with rigid economy. live several
amount a peasant can very nearly
exc out a years bare existence II he
returns to his native village in the
were ten times the size. could only
solve half the problem Of setting the
blind soldier his feet. And since
actually II is quite inadequate, in nine
out OF every ten cases. to furnish its
recipient with even the simplest ne
cessities of life, the government can
not rest content there. II must go
further.
The problem is great deal more
than a mere question of building a
roof over the blind soldiers head and
putting food in his mouth II that
were the only difficulty the poorhouse
would remove il at a stroke. The real
question is one of taking several hun
dSed full-grown men whom fortune has
broken and reendowing them with the
courage and the essential functions Of
men. flling their sunken hearts with
hope and training their listless hands
70 labor. In word. what the situa-
tlon requires is nothing less than the
remakinR of the mems morale" and
The re-education of their hands and
brains
First attempts to meet the situation
were unsuccessful In their issue. When
hostilities were only two or three
months old and the number Of blind
had not grown alarming. the govern
ment contented itself with equipping
Tor them special ward IN the Ma
tional Hospital of ihe Three Hun
dSed. the venerable asylum for the
blind founded by st. Louis, King Of
France. in the thirteenth century. But
there Is a reason why blinded soldiers
whose salvation is intended should not
be lodged In the hospital Of the Three