The Washington herald., 1922-08-12
Treating Soldiers As Men.

THE disqualification service OF the United
i States Veterans Bureau needs something
more than competent physicians and able execu-
tives 1t needs practising consultant on the most
abstruse of all scences-human nature:
Our attention has been called to apparently
insignificant detail in the treatment of disabled
former service men at a District of Columbia hos
pital-a detail which probably does more to pre-
vent the proper recuperation OF the sick than the
best medical skill can counteract. The suggestion
comes in letter the editor of The Washing
ton Herald from gentleman who now is submit
ting to discipline, in the form OF enforced social
inferiority, as punishment for losing his good
health on French battlefelds.
His complaint may queruous and neurotic
to government hospital officials who know nothing
about the aching hearts of doughboys. The aver
age man, however. who served in the army as an
enlisted man during the late war with Germany,
the ordinary submerged unit in the hve million,
whose greatest battle was not with Germans but
with his own pride and whose most deadly battle
field was not in the Argonne but in the cold, bitter
darkness of his own soul, will appreciate the posi-
ton taken by this patient.
He complains in brief, that undergoing
treatment in at least one Washington hospital are
referred to, officially otherwise, Mister. "
They mentioned either as plain Jones" Smith,
etc. or as Inmate So-and-So," irritating an
appeation as be conceived In other words,
it is impressed upon the mind OF the veteran that,
when he enlisted conscripted into the serv-
ice he gave up forever all claim to the courtesies
one American citizen has a right to expect from
another.
We wonder if the worthy doctors in charge OF
Veterans Bureau hospitals understand the process
.of thought which goes in the disabled soldiers
mind He has been born and bred American.
He has been taught, starting with the little red
schoolhouse, that the most deadly insult which can
be Offered to the American is the suggestion of
caste inferory, the implied suggestion Of slavery.
This feeling is hereditary with the man. 1t has
been intensified merely by the atmosphere OF the
United States. His ancestors in Europe had the
sentiment and because of it left their native
lands to make homes in the wilderness. The
veteran is bountifuly supplied with the same sort
of passions which drove onward the Pilgrims and
the Puritans, the early Irish aad German immi-
grants, the later Balkan and Russian immigrants.
His first impulse is, probably, to fight his
alleged superiors with any weapon at his COM
mand. His whole soul is charged with bitter
hatred towards them. But, let presume, he is
man Of considerable native common sense.
Somewhere. in whatever solitude he find, he
goes through battle with himself. He cows his
own soul The doctors could not. He emerges
from that struggle not quite the he was
before-a hopeless broken creature
He may respond cheerfully enough when his
name is called. But he is wearing mask. The
hospital officials might we'll know ever
that some of their patients in the depths Of their
hearts, nurse undying hatred
Any unbiased psychologist bear witness to
this. Let the Veterans Bureau doctors consult
not military psychologist but professor Of
the subject at George Washington, Georgetown,
American University, Catholic University, the Uni
versity of Maryland the University of Virginia, or
any other civilian institution of learning.
There may be few such that called to
the attention of The Herald by its correspondent.
Most of the hospital doctors may be, for all we
know splendid fellows with tolerant minds and
great hearts. But that there has been such
case is enough Punishment of men for being
disabled must stop