Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1919-05-18
ri OLD on to Uncle Sans in
- surance." has been the
slogan Of the war risk

bureau since the signing
or the armistice, when the work for
insurance and compensation began to
reach its full volume and the bene-
hts to the families Of the fighting
men at home and abroad began to
assume realities. This cry has greet
ed the men at the ports of debarka-
ton abroad and at the hospitals and
camps of rehabilitation in this coun-
try.
With the knowledge that about
100000 men who served during the
war are insured by the bureau of
war risk insurance for approximately
$4,000, .000-the average policy
being for $9,170.06-the bureau has
been untiring in it's efforts to i'm
press every man of the Army and
Navy with the fact that he may con-
tinue his present government in
surance at substantially the same
low rate for five years, during which
time he will be given an opportunity
to convert 1t into any one of the five
standard after-the-war forms of gov
eminent insurance. such as ordinary
life. encouragement life. thirty-pay-
ment life, twenty-year endowment,
thirty-year endowment and endow-
ment maturing at the age. Of sixty
two years. = - ..a..-. ,
X X X X sr-, "..
On April just eighteen months had
elapsed since President Wilson APP
proved the war risk insurance act,
which is considered the wisest and
most beneficent provision for the de-
pendents OF soldiers and sailors in
time of war ever made by any nation
in the history of the world.
The administration of the act by the
Treasury Department through the bu-
reau of war risk insurance, during the
last year and a half, constituted one
Of the big war tasks of the govern
ment. And the establishment Is not
that it has not been done perfectly.
but that it has been done at all, con-
sidering the enormous difficulties I'M
der which the bureau has labored.
Until the last few weeks, when the
bureau moved into it's handsome new
building on the historic site of the
old Arlington Hotel, 1t has been very
much like the dove sent out from the
ark. with no place to rest. From a
small organization of twenty people
working in a little room in the sub
basement of the Treasury Department.
issuing insurance on seamen and car
goes, it developed almost overnight
into a working force of something
like seventeen thousand persons
There were no Office accommodations
for the new giant, so the war risk
bureau went from pillar to post,
working out it's destiny in offices~cre-
ated in storehouses, loft buildings, up
blind alleys or in the classic shades
of the new National Museum, where it
was hampered by paintings, statuary
and the gigantic mastodons, under the
very shadow of which the typewriters
clicked merrily away ..
The new organization did not have
was there the moment the act Great
ing 1t was passed. Col. Henry D.
Lindsey, the new soldier director of
the bureau, in speaking of the diff
cult problem faced on the passage of
the act of insuring more than a mil
lion men who were already in the
service, explained that there was no
precedent for the task. 1t was pioneer
work and the problem was primarily
one of organization. With the appli-
cations for insurance, allotments and
allowances pouring in at the rate of
of thousands a day. the Of
fees of the bureau cramped and in
widely scattered sections of the Ma
tional Capital and the personnel badly
equipped. the difficulties were almost
X X X X
Since the appointment Of Col.
as director of the war risk
many of the complications have been
This is partly due to the
fact that since the signing of the
armistjce the work Of the bureau has
been steady rather than increasing,
and largely due to the directors ex-
perience and success in organization.