OCR Text |
Show Kathleen Norris Says: Dont Say You Didn't Know It j Bell Syndicate. WNU Features. Many war-wounded can take regular jobs; jobs don't always need two legs, i or two arms, or two eyes. Many of them can take part-time jobs. By KATHLEEN NORRIS WHEN a serious crime is committed, reparation repara-tion has to be made. When a person suffers from a devastating illness, convalescence convales-cence is long and slow. War is both a crime and an illness. We self-styled Christian Chris-tian peoples plunged into it, and the fever of it burned into our very souls. Now, not for sensational reasons, but from simple common sense, we : have to lend money and send clothes and food and build hospitals and re - establish trade for friend and foe alike, just to keep the world going at all. Our late enemies are just as airy about asking help as are our allies. It is for every one of us to help the world toward convalescence. If you are merely a good, honest citizen, citi-zen, with kindly impulses in your heart, think it out. If you have been fortunate enough to find God in your earthly pilgrimage, then add prayer to your thoughts. Think hard, pray hard, not just for hungry babies in Poland and Germany and Italy, but for our own men. Think think for five minutes what Borne of our boys paid for this war. Take the boy you love best, the boy for whom your hopes are highest, whether he be seven months, seven years or 17 years old. Picture that boy suffering. Suffering hard steady pain, from one of those thousand injuries in-juries of which we say so lightly, "well, the doctors don't know exactly ex-actly what it is." Some delicate internal fibre incurably torn, some essential inch of bone rotted away, some infinitesimal splinter pressing on eyes or brain, and your magnificent mag-nificent six-footer is going to wear all his life that chiselled, weary look that means pain. He Might Be Your Son. Your own boy that roughneck out In the sandbox who already this morning has been riding his bicycle like Barney Oldfield, coasting down his slide, splashing in the lawn sprinklers, sprin-klers, climbing the apple tree, that outlaw who presently will come in for his chop and baked potato, his exhausted nap he might be one of them. He might be one of the hundreds who walk with a crutch; he might be wearing a patch over one of his beautiful eyes, or sitting sighing, with his forehead gripped by his hand, when the dreadful inevitable pain comes back. He won't marry; 4 he won't burden his girl with this. He won't complain much, or talk much of the mud and the loneliness and the dying in south Italy. He won't tell you of the morning he was just one of the other fellows, trying to take an island beach despite dripping drip-ping sweat and stinting insects and sharp rifle fire, and of the noon when he was carried to the hospital ship, never to be himself again. Today put your boy in his place. And then, if you will, go down on your knees. And rise from them resolved re-solved that not one single war wounded boy in your town is going to be left without the work that he can do. Many of them can take regular jobs; jobs don't always need two legs, or two arms, or two eyes. Many of them can take part-time jobs. Not one in ten, they tell me, need be idle. If these boys were lying wounded and screaming on some field near your house, how fast good women would organize to help them. How ' fast they would be carried to the ' cool bed and clean bandages, the hot coffee and the opiates that mean 1 eomfort and love and care again ' after the bleak years. 1 -M'-ir wLf. ; Almost blind, he runs prosperous farm, 3 YOU CAN HELP Many thousands of veterans are handicapped in some way. It may be loss of an arm or a leg; it may be partial or total blindness. . Some men came back with nervous afflictions that will remain for life; others oth-ers suffer from wrenched or torn muscles, or recurrent diseases dis-eases like malaria. Most of them are anxious to be self-supporting self-supporting and independent. They don't want sympathy. They merely want a little help to even things up. In many fields they can do as good a job as anyone else. Frequently they do better, because they are more serious and determined deter-mined to succeed. Everybody who stayed at home during the war owes these veterans a great deal. It is everyone's duty to give whatever assistance he can. This may be finding him a job, or advising about the best school to take his training in, or it may be renting him a room in your home. Some may know where he can buy a business that is suited to his capacity, or where to obtain a loan on favorable terms. Those who can't do anything directly to help these men who deserve so much, at least can keep the matter before their friends and neighbors. Sometimes a few ivords at the right time will do wonders. They may secure the chance some down-hearted veteran is praying for, when he has almost al-most lost hope. Well, they are lying wounded, and in their hearts they are screaming for help, these boys who were magnificent mag-nificent physical specimens when we sent them away, and who now will be good enough only (as Falslaff said), "to beg at the town's end," unless we help. They Need Your Help. Two years after the first great war, in a rich European city, I saw men in uniform begging, men whose old uniforms wore decorations, decora-tions, too. The shame of that, the outrage of that, sticks in my throat every time I remember it. Men who had known the bloody trenches, whose valor their country hod recognized, recog-nized, begging in the streets. If your town is a big one, this work of employing handicapped veterans vet-erans already is organized. Get into that organization. And talk at your own dinner table. Get the big employers em-ployers of your neighborhood to express ex-press themselves, put them on record. rec-ord. But if your town is a small one the work is easier. You know people peo-ple there. You can enlist everyone. You can personally contact the wounded veterans, and find out what each one wants to do. Some years ago I wrote in this column of the Bakers, mother, father, sister. Three Baker boys were in the service, serv-ice, and while they were away, the three at home bought each one a working, practical farm. The deeds to these farms were at the boys' places at the homecoming dinner. Fred came home almost blind, but Fred is running the most flourishing flourish-ing of the farms today, and his wife and boys manage the bookkeeping. Don't hurt a wounded man with sity, or with charity. Find out what le can do and see that he has a :hance to do it. Birth Rate Dropping Continued decline in the high birth 'ate of the war years was noted in 'egistration statistics for 1945. The igures were released by the U. S. ublic Health service. Total of officially recorded births ast year was 2,735,456, compared rith 2.794.800 in 1944, a decline of :.l per cent. The birth rate in 1945 ras 196 Per 1.000 population, gainst 20.2 the year before and 21.5 n 1943. The last-named was the lighest annual rate during the war 'ears. |