The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-08-23
FEWER INSANITY CASES SINCE WAR,
 DOCTORS DECLARE

London, Aug. 23-An interesting sidelight on President Wilson's remark
 about the world going mad is given
 in the annual report of Dr. William
 Graham of Belfast, one of the most
 highly reputed Irish alienists. Dr..
 Graham presents remarkable pie
 ture of the tonic value of war. He
 says:
 "It has become commonplace since August, 1914, to say the world is growing mad and there is a wide spread popular. notion that the distress and agony of a conflict so terrible as the present one must end in a pro- found psychic disturbance and alien |. ation. Yet the fact is indisputable that insanity, like corns. has 'lessened during the period of the war"
 So far as the, future is concerned pr. Graham is equally encouraging. He says:
 "The problem of he probable in- fuence of war upon the mental life of nation and upon insanity is not a isolated one. It is implicated in the general economic sociological and physical state of the community at a given time. The present war will have a powerful bearing on these fac tors and so will deeply affect the men tai health. The need of our time is the mobilization of all forces that make for betterment, humanitarian. ethical, social and religious, to help the nation to make permanent the lessons in loss and sorrow.
 There are solid grounds for the hope that, especially although not ex- o1I ho nd a great diminution in those neurotic disorders that form a part of the men, tai abnormality of thousands of men who have gone or are preparing to go to the front, who have all their life been subject to the bondage of neurasthenic weakness and incapacity or of psychasthenic fears or hypo- chrondriac fancies. They have never known what it is to live, but at the country's call they have flung from off them the spell of ancient inhabita- tions and long, established impractical ities and have gone. forth to face wounds and death. Only when sum- moned to possible surrender of life have they learned how wonderful life really is. The physical regime under which these men are compelled to live can have nothing but the best effect on those subject to its discipline.
 Especially significant is the change coming over the lives of women of the middle classes. These sheltered daughters of the merchant, of the professional man, victims of mid-Vic- torian traditions of gentility, are now into line with their sisters of the upper and the humber social ranks, and are discovering that life is something greater than the latest novel from Mudie's, or a game of ten his. or even the tepid gossip of the church sewing meeting. likeness and ennui have lost their hold. Healthy and unselfsh activity is now the prevailing fashion among war-en- women. It has set them free from the benumh ping convention alties that threatened to stifle their psychic energy, and so far 1t has con- tributed to the soundness of mind and nerve among the mighty sociological forces which the present world con- f1ict set in motion.
 "Not the least will be the new value set upon all eorts of good work and the new dignity which will crown the worker with the overwhelming circle against mental disorder has been erected. War is war. It is the de- struction of culture, art, education. The finest fruits of humanity, but the human mind has strange power of wringing out of the worst evils some great and far-reaching good"