Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1918-03-12


In France | have heard an ironist say
Yes, he ii hero for ten days and he is
decorated ruin; cripple for life"
Yet "mutiles" be patched up. They
can be provided with "jambe Americana" and
fixed with all sorts of joints and springs
that make it practical. Last week. in the train to
Nh, | sat next to one such mended hero; he
showed me his arm with real pride and explained
that for the present he had work in the municipal
markets of Paris; but that he hoped to get trans
ferred to something more esthetic; he would pre-
Ter to be sort of subcuratOr in picture gallery.
"See Monsieur, l can hold fork like this-or
l can grasp a glass; the thumb is exaggeratedly
long, have to get a special glove. :"
Yes, the mutes features can be nodded into
something like human sembance where it's the
face that has suffered But that is hardly enough.
1t is not enough to make the hero for ten days. the
cripple for lifetime look like man. He must
be restored to real living-tO a part in the world
of industry. That is for the sake of Belgium or
France. or Britain, or whatever his country may
be; it is also for the mans sake
| have just had talk with Miss Grace HARPER
chief of the bureau of the reeducatiOn of mutiles
at American Red Cross headquarters in Paris
She has shown estimates that for every mil
lion men placed in the field France counts on hav-
ing to care for $4,000 mutiles-50O0 of them a
month. And this figure does not take account Of
the war-blinded and war-deafened and warcrazed.
says the cautious chief "They are the best esti-
mates we have been able to clre but they are
estimates
France is working miracles in making over
manned men," Miss Harper goes on, but even at
the close of 1917 the work of reconstruction mas
not yet caught up with the destructive forces I'm
der the French system the wounded soldier passes
from Post de Secours' TO a base hospital and
thence TO one of the eleven existing Centres de
PhVSiOtheraDip" he
gical treatment, or physotherapy, or both physio-
therapy meaning electrical or mechanical massage
Here he receives also an artificial limb, and his
industrial training is begun-to fit him for new
place in the social organism.
1.-The French centers of physiotherapy are capa-
bic of receiving less than 25 per cent of the mu-
tiles. Happily the schools of reeducation are able
to take of some of those mutiles who must
perforce, forego the physotherapeutics.
Il am talking to you in terms like these because
the problem is such big one, and because our
own country, too, must realize something of the
problem we are all up against and the support
that must be given to the American Red Cross if
we are either to be of much help TO France or 10
ourselves in this business of making men out of
wars waStage. But l want you to realize that the
Red Cross did not come to France just to study
Il, for one, have been in Paris since March, 1917
and have visited practically every large center of
reeducatiOnal work in France, and some of the
small ones NOT all, by any means, for nominally
there are 103 of them. The Red Cross continues
to study the new developments the new demands
in the field of re-education, for when the Ameri-
army has its full share of casualties the Red
Cross, whose first task is to back up that army
must benefit by French and British experience
But our real program for helping in France has
now advanced beyond the stage of study.
"A superficial examination of our field shows
this: The training already provided in France is
industrial training, the preparation of dis
charged soldiers Tor such jobs as Stenography