Evening star., 1929-11-17
BY THOMAS r.. HENRY.

moved through the world III
clouds of fears, hates, exaggera'
i tions and eXaltations.
Everybody may have been trifie
psychopathic. Everybody saw things in
distorting perspectives. 1t was an in
terlude of disordered dreams-a period
of hallucinations of great blonde beasts
and of black pterodactylS belching
smoke.
Eleven years have passed. Most of
the world has been restored to normal
pcrSpectiveS on things as they are. 1t
never lost entirely its contacts with
reality. 1t is absorbed once more in its
routine, peacetime tasks. The Incl
dents of war days are dimming memo
ries.
But the war plunged many individuals
deeper in the clouds than their fellows
far deeper and beyond the bounds of
reality altogether. Thousands of them
still are lost there, unable to find their
way out again into the Sunlit world of
things as they are.
The ArmiStice anniversary found ap-
proXimately $4,000 of them scattered in
institutions throughout the country, in
Guiding more than 300 at st. Elizabeth's
Hospital here. These are the psychi-
atric caseS-the mad men" left behind
by the receding tide of war. They con-
Stitute one of the most pathetic of all
the aftermaths of that interlude of
world madness. The cases range all
the way from disabling nervous dis
orders to extreme functional psychoses
from which the prognosis is extremely
dubious.
Adjustment Problem Complicated.
When the u. S. Veterans Bureau took
over the care of those. disabled in the
service one of the major purposes was
to help them adjust to the world they
must live in so that they could be inde-
pendent and self respecting. The prob
lem was complicated enough for those
disabled with physical wounds which
rendered their bodies less efficient ma
chimes. But these men thought and
reacted in comprehensive ways. 1t
was far more difficult to work out ad-
justments for those whose minds were
affected-who could not think and re-
act as others did.
The Bureau still is working on this
problem. 1t recognizes the psychoSes
as wounds of war, just as much as bull
let or bayonet wounds or disablement
resulting from disease contracted in the
service. Perhaps these mental wounds
were the deepest and most terrible of
all. A man can be given a new arm
or new leg, a new nose or new chin.
But he cannot be given a new brain.
Nobody has yet found the secret of
restoring nervous tissue. Recognizing
the insane as truly victims of the war,
the. policy has been from the first to
work out adjustments for them so that
they can live happily. This effort
never ceases, even when the individual
apparently is beyond all hope.
The various pSychoSeS resulting from
the war, it is explained at the Veterans
Bureau, probably originated in difficult
ties of adjustment.
Profound Changes Demanded.
The great war tore hundreds of thou
sands violently from the adjustments
they had made. It demanded profound
changes in the pSychical patterns into
which they had become fitted It de-
manded of the extreme individualist the
Subordination of individuality to an un-
comfortable, and sometimes unendur-
able, degree. It required of the weak
ling, to whom kindness and coddling
had become necessities, and adjustment
to the diScomfortS of inattention and
harshness. It required-most of all
the adjustment of the individualitys
Unborn drive for its own survival with
the prospect of extinction.
These requirements, for a new adjust
ment cut through all levels of society
The draft took the boy from the noun
tain farm-independent deeply religious,
unlettered and adjusted to a very simple
routine of daily tasks and a very limited
social circle Of folks thinking precisely
as he himself thought-and forced him
to adjust to the profanity. crudeness,
harshneSS and cosmopolitanism of the
Army cantonment 1t took the moron
from the factory, where he had an al
most perfect adjustment in the doing of
one simple task automatically minute
after minute and year after year, and
confronted him with complicated re-
quirements which taxed his feeble men,
tality to the utmost. 1t took the high
spirited youth from the foot ball field
and the college classroom. from which
he had surveyed the world with an ex-
alted, If not altogether unjustified, idea
of his own importance, and forced him
to demean himself, at least so 1t seemed
to him, before men whom he consid-
cred greatly his interiors. In fact, it
took men still in the formative years of
their characters and personalities from
all levels CT living and made them all
adjust to common level. For some 1t
was too high. For others it was too low.
For some it was too complicated. For
others it was too simple.
Transition Difficult.
Even for men in the Regular Army,
both officers and enlisted soldiers, the
transition from the adjustment to the
comparatively simple, comfortable, mo-
notonous routine of the military post
to the tumultuous, dangerous activities
of the battlefield was difficult. 1t was
no simple change from polishing boots
or conducting military ceremontals over
familiar fields to facing bayonetS In
-drenched darkness.
These adjustments all were difficult.
It required a certain balance OF tntellt-
gence and character with past and pres
ent circumstances to make them. Few
fitted naturally into the war environ
ment. It neceSsitated struggle to act
in an approved fashion so differently
from the way one was accustomed To
act.
For example, the normal reaction OF
most men to a "cuSsing out" for no
particular reason is physical resistance
or return OF the same kind of cussing.
In the new environment they only could
respond with respectable 'yes Slrs"
while they stood at attention. The
normal reaction to machine gun bullets
raining across field Is to get safely
out of the way as soon as possible. In
the new environment the response re-
quired was to go forward into the
leaden rama response requiring the
subjugation of the strongest drive OF
nature, that for preservation OF the
self.
Everything TOpsy Turvy.
Everything was topsy-turvy. And
everybody had to adjust in some way.
The wonder is that such vast ma
jority in all the armies made the sort
of adjustment approved by society. A
more titanic struggle than that which
swayed back and forth over the she'll
torn fields and forests of Northern
France took place in the souls OF men,