The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1918-10-13

between the dressing station on the bat
tlefeld and No. 9 in Lakewood, n. j.,
U. S. A., the wounded soldier has
passed through a number Of hospitals and
stations, In some cases a dozen or more.
At each they have demended: Age7 Mar
ried? Single? White7 Colored? Weight?
and so on like Browning gun until Pri-
vate Doe has grown heartily sick of these
details of his personal identity, and the
best way to drive him straight into his
shell is to ask him to state them once
more.
Coffeen gets his information, but he
does it with more tact; he also gets under
the skin of Private Doe and en- rapport
with him. There is no technic for doing
this; you have to be born Coffeen, who
is a natural artist at what fulsome people
call big brothering does not.
When that case record is filed it ap-
pears what Private Doe would like best
to study, what he would like next best,
which he seems better fitted to make good
at and what the doctor thinks about his
tackling the work. The rest is his assign
ment TO his class.
OF course it is not possible TO keep a
clock-work schedule of classes. The
doctors have first call on the patient and
want a good deal of his time. He comes
to school as he can and when there, in the
nature of things, he has to have painstak-
ing individual instruction. This is easily
possible, there being about one instructor
to ten students.
If Private Doe skips school right along,
which does happen in some eases, there is
no direct way to enforce his attendance,
assuming that that were desirable. What
can be done is to learn from the doctor
whether he has legitimate excuse, and if
he has not, an aggravated truant who
really ought to show up if only for the
sake of his own cure is likely to find HIM
self deprived of the coveted passes to 60
down town and other privileges. The
average daily attendance is two-thirds of
the enrolment, which Major Reagle con-
siders very good.
The excellent simple system above de-
scribed is now in some jeopardy, COM
mittee of expert paper workers in high
places having just wished masterpiece
of complicated paper work on the hapless
department at No. 9. 1t is blank form,
several pages long, and about as intri-r
cate as the offspring Of draft question
naire welded to an income tax return
blank.
Shop Work Prescribed By Doctor.
tits planned on the assumption that all
the shopwork, &c, win be prescribed by
the doctor, like medicine, to suit the special
physical needs Of poor Private Doe, and
without much reference to Does own incli-
nations. That might work fairly well up at
No. 3, near Colonia, where they specialize
in bone and joint eases. At No. 8 it won't,
and the staff is wondering how to use n
without adding clerical force and keep
everybody happy.
Major Reagle-the rest of his name is
Fred P.-was the manual training super
visor in the schools of Montclair before he
was commissioned, and he will be again
when he is mustered out. The members of
bis staff are either deferred class draft
men of the 1917 registration who volun-
teered for limited service and made good
or they are themselves former patients,
some of them back from France, and nov
on the limited service rolls.
They include college and university
men. One Of these, and one of the best of
them, came back with the very worst ease
Of "cafard" the department has SO far
seen. He had been an ambulance driver.
His nerves were pretty much shen
wraeked, one Of his lungs was lightly bQt