The pension plague

WAYNE CARD

The specter of the soldiers' dole has risen again to complicate the impending election and to plague the coming session of Congress. Although planted deep in the legislative graveyard, the apparition has returned to terrorize the Ichabods of the Senate and the House and to threaten further inroads upon the taxpayer's purse.

President Hoover's hold dispersal of the Bonus Expeditionary Force, which besieged the Capitol for two months last summer, by no means disposed of the bonus as a political issue. In fact, the decisive though not altogether tactful manner in which the tattered veterans were ousted from Washington has awakened in some quarters an undeserved sympathy for the bonus cause and has clouded the whole problem of veterans' compensation. The net result of the eviction has been to add emotional fire to the demands of the former soldiers.

Today the chief menace is not from any possible recurrence of the bonus siege; the misguided marchers are not likely to return to Washington during the present administration. The real danger is in the veterans' lobby that will infest Congressional halls in December, seeking to intimidate the nation's lawmakers into passing additional veterans' bills which would sacrifice the common weal to the grasping demands of a minority group which represents less than one per cent of the total population.

The more responsible veterans are not trying to gouge the government. They are too patriotic to go running to Uncle Sam whenever they get a wage-cut or a torn finger-nail. But thus far the influence of these men has not headed oft the powerful crusade to impoverish the taxpayers for the benefit of the peace veterans.

Laws already in force allow anyone who served three months or more in the World War and who later acquired some ailment, in civil life, to claim from the government a disability allowance. The veteran can get on the payroll regardless of the origin of his disability unless it resulted from willful misconduct. And this "willful misconduct" clause the American Legion is now seeking to have stricken from the laws, thus adding to the pension payroll the victims of acquired social diseases.

In the next campaign to extend veterans' relief, principles of sound government will be battered by a sentimental appeal based upon the rough treatment given some of the bonus marchers who besieged the Capitol last summer. Bloodshed will be charged to the opponents of the bonus, and there almost certainly will be a Congressional investigation of the Washington "battle" of July 28.

It will be easy, of course, to make propaganda of the eviction of the B. E. F. The squatters, who had come to Washington on the advice of men who knew better, were driven out with bayonets and sabers and threatened with tanks and machine guns. Clouds of smoke from the exploding of tear-gas bombs and the burning of shanties formed an ominous pall over the District of Columbia as federal troops ousted the bonus "army" from its squalid camps. Governor Albert C. Ritchie wisely prevented the bonus seekers from camping in Maryland.

Much will be made of the two bonus marchers now buried in Arlington National Cemetery; of the wounded veteran who had been awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for heroism at Belleau Wood; of the refugee who, in France fourteen years earlier, had saved the life of the cavalry major who drove him from the Anacostia flats; of the women and children who were gassed; of the woman who was kicked by a cavalry borse.

The fact remains, however, that the soldiers fired no bullets. The shooting was done by policemen, and most of the casualties incurred, before the army units were called out. The soldiers were called upon only after some of the bonus seekers attacked with brickbats policemen who were trying to evict them from abandoned government buildings to which they had no claim. More than five thousand of those who came to Washington had already taken advantage of the government's generosity in paying their carfare home.

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The "last-ditchers" who had to he forcibly ousted from Washington were the unwitting victims of shyster lawyers, hireling lobbyists, Congressional demagogues, and Communist agitators. It was only natural that these refugees should gain widespread sympathy, hut the problem of meeting the renewed veterans' raid upon an already depleted treasury is an entirely different matter.

Opposition or insurgent Senators may call the eviction of the marchers "an unpardonable outrage" or "the most deplorable episode in the history of the capital," but, as President Hoover pointed out in defending his action, "government cannot he coerced by mob rule." If the government were to surrender to demands of this kind, Washington would be besieged constantly by lobbyist-led hordes and majority rule would become a farce.

Possibly President Hoover, once known as a great humanitarian, has lost votes by his stern attitude toward the ill-disciplined remnant of the B. E. F. The use of soldiers against civilians has been infrequent in our nation's history and always has been resented. In the election, of course, it will be impossible to separate this issue from others equally potent. Yet. even if Hoover should have to pay for his firmness, it would be calamitous if this circumstance should stampede a lame-duck Congress into involving the government in further debt in behalf of the veterans, of whom those disabled by war are already generously provided for.

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The bonus payment itself is only a small part in the program of the veterans' lobby. The granting of the bonus would open the way for far more expensive demands upon the government. The question is not one of caring for actual war victims; this group was adequately provisioned years ago. The issue is whether or not a man who served three months or more in an army camp in 1917-18 is entitled to draw pay from the American people for the remainder of his life and to have his widow pensioned.

The veterans' compensation already enacted has strayed far from the principle enforced by the British Parliament, which grants pensions only for disability due to war service, and upheld by Calvin Coolidge, who declared that "we owe no bonus to able-bodied veterans" and that to pay a bonus would be to abandon our theory of patriotism. At present, any veteran who becomes addicted to bad dreams or who drops a keg on his foot while making beer in his cellar, can get help from Uncle Sam.

The result is that more than a billion dollars a year, or a quarter of the national government's income, is now spent in veterans' relief, and actuaries have estimated that this amount will be doubled in scarcely more than another decade. While other governments are reducing their aggregate pension payments, we are sky-rocketing ours. In spite of the fact that we had relatively few casualties in the World War, we are paying to veterans more than England, France, and Germany combined. Of the 770,000 Americans now drawing World War pay from the federal government, less than half are handicapped as a result of the war.

Yet the more the veterans' lobby gets, the more it demands. It now seeks, among other things, pensions for widows and orphans of all World War veterans who have died or will die of illness or accidents incurred in civil life, pensions for women who marry veterans before 1941 and who become widows of these men. and an expensive array of new veterans' hospitals. If these demands are granted by a weak-kneed Congress, not only will it be possible for almost every living veteran of the World War to get himself on the government payroll but, in addition, it will become possible for a woman who was not yet born when the World War ended, to marry a veteran in 1940 and after his death to draw a pension from the government for the remainder of her life.

The pension racket is already supplemented by the pork-barrel building of unneeded veterans' hospitals. Almost every town big enough to have a water-tower and a pool room thinks it should have a veterans' hospital as a gift from the nation and begins working on its Congressman, even though 51.27 per cent of the patients of the present veterans' hospitals are not suffering from ailments traceable to war.

The veterans' lobby, the most formidable in the nation, has become the nightmare of many Washingtonians. Neither of the major political parties has had the courage to take a stand against this steam roller which is working havoc with the treasury budget. And, although both candidates are on record against the cash payment of the bonus, neither has spoken plainly against the more devastating threats of the veterans' lobby.

Fortunately, however, there are now signs of an impending turn in public sentiment on this subject. The American people still have as much respect as ever for the man who made sacrifices for his country in war, but they are beginning to tire of the ninety-day hero of the rookie camp who now rushes to the pension roll if he limps a bit from an automobile smashup or a speakeasy fracas or if he imagines he suffers from itch or indigestion.

One evidence of this change in the public temper is the organization of the Veterans' Committee for Reducing the Cost of Peace and the National Economy League. The latter body, consisting mainly of veterans, has organized branches in more than thirty states and has pointed out how the government could save $452,154,554 a year in veterans' relief without robbing any one actually disabled in war. This program, for instance, would remove from the government payroll some of the 230,000 Spanish War veterans, only 869 of whom actually suffered war disabilities.

Many individual veterans and several Legion posts have also spoken out against the heroes' racket. The Willard Straight Post of New York was suspended by the Legion because it had the courage to stand out against the pension graft.

It is true, of course, that many veterans are now out of work. If there had been no depression, there probably would have been no bonus march last summer. But caring for the victims of war and providing for the victims of unemployment are two separate problems, and they must he treated as such if our government is to remain financially sound.

If the taxpayers of the nation could make Congress aware of their views with half the effectiveness that the veterans' lobby already has achieved, no more money would he squandered on peace veterans. Congressmen are always fearful of adverse votes—even if these votes come from mere taxpayers and from people who do not march against the Capitol.

The power of the soldier vote is greatly overrated. It is much less united and less potent than the noise and the threats of the veterans' lobby would seem to indicate. This lobby can be deflated, just as that of the Anti-Saloon League has been, whenever the majority of the voters rouse themselves from their political lethargy and make Congress aware of their opposition to the veterans' racket.