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Show Mentally Healthy Soldier Needed for Modern War High Selection Standard Required in Supplying Sup-plying Army , With Men Equipped to Meet Hazards of 'Blitz' Tactics. By BAUKHAGE 1 LULl National Farm and Home Hour Commentator. strain on their morale, and it must be expected that a man with unstable un-stable nervous system or a flaw of character will crack under the strain." In the last war an effort was made to weed out the men, who, from their medical histories or as a result of examinations, were considered consid-ered unable to stand up under the strain of service. Strangely enough, it was the medical officers rather than the line officers who were inclined in-clined to be lenient in accepting questionable cases, and the medical department of the army records that 8.640 cases of record were discovered discov-ered and the men retained in the army against the advice of the neuro-psychiatric officers. Many of these men broke down when they reachecUcamp before they heard a gun fired. With this record rec-ord staring them in the face, it is no wonder that responsible war department de-partment officials are anxious that there be no let-down in the standards stand-ards for admission to military service. serv-ice. Pan American Child Congress War and politics are no respecters of children. Bombs and shells spare neither nursery nor school. And politics, frequently, like the bad Samaritan, goes by on the other side, even in peace-time. The Pan-American Child Congress, Con-gress, whose purpose is to build sturdier, happier, wiser future citizens citi-zens of the Americas, was established estab-lished in 1919. Plans are now under way for its first meeting since 1935 which is to be held next spring in Washington. Four times during the last six years, the meeting of the congress has bad to be postponed. The first came in 1938 when Nicaragua found that it could not go ahead with plans for being host to the conclave. Then, when the delegates were all ready to take the boat the next year for Costa Rica, where the postponed congress was to meet, it was cancelled can-celled again, indirectly because of war. The real reason for this last postponement, perhaps, was indicated indicat-ed in a headline in a San Jose, Costa Rica, newspaper, which read: "Is this a Pan American-German Congress?" Con-gress?" Germany had announced that it would send exhibits and take part in the meeting and presumably Nazi influence in Costa Rica was strong enough to make it unwise for the local government to protest. In any case, the meeting was again cancelled. On Gray Days Meditation, Repose The other day I sat on a bale of strdw in a stable with the measured crunch and stamp of horses around me, waiting for the rain to stop. I watched the slanting drops with mixed desires. The earth was so thirsty for these few drops that it seemed more than selfish to hope the watery benediction would cease. At last a rooster crowed and the rain thinned to a mist. The whole countryside seemed to look up in damp gratitude for its short cup of pleasure. There was life and movement move-ment everywhere. The dog dug in the softened dirt for no particular reason. When I passed he looked up at me with mud on his whiskers and a foolish, happy grin on his face. Chickens energetically pulled at worms that they hadn't seen for weeks and then, suddenly, there was a bright flash of color before me. Eight bluebirds appearing out of the air like a bright light suddenly turned and alighted on the top rail of the fence. Back in the city, skies were still gray, but the same muted feeling of relief that I had felt in the country spread along the streets. There is always to me a beauty in gray days. I feel as though I had stepped from a garish world into a quiet cloister I hear sandalled feet on cool stone, the light, subdued, comes through stained glass windows. win-dows. It is time for meditation and repose. C Rep. John W. Gwynne of Iowa has a plan whereby automobile license plates would be good for a five-year period in order to conserve steel for national defense. The congressman estimates that adoption of such a plan would save 550 tons of steel annually in Iowa alone and would also save the taxpayers of that state $44,060 each year. WNU Service, 1343 H Street, N-W, N Washington, D. C. i At a recent White House news conference the President was asked whether he thought there ought to be a lowering of the physical, mental and educational standards for admission ad-mission to the army. The question came up at the close of a long dissertation by Mr. Roosevelt Roose-velt on a report from the army which seemed to reveal a shocking state of the national health. It was based on figures which showed that nearly 50 per cent of the selectees rejected for service were ineligible because of deficiencies in these three categories. It did look as though Americans, as a people, were pretty sick. The President's answer to the question of lowering the standards of admission was an emphatic negative. nega-tive. Very little attention was paid to this response at the time and the stories which went out over the air and the wires that day were chiefly concerned with the program 'lor healing the physical ills of selectees at government expense. But that part of the picture, as I learned when I talked with a prominent promi-nent psychiatrist, is only half of it or less. Lowering the standards of mental requirements would, in case of war, mean a terrific psychopathic casualty casual-ty list, the taxpayer would have a terrific bill to pay and the efficiency of the American fighting forces would be immeasurably impaired. Record of Last War Let's look at the record of the last war, when the mental hazards were only a fraction of what they are today with a thousand machines harnessed for destruction. Briefly, the story is this: The government of the taxpayer has paid out nearly a billion dollars for the benefit and care of mental cases among veterans of the last war. This sum represents 20 per cent of all benefits paid to veterans and their dependents. There are 92,231 such mental cases and a third of all veterans confined to hospitals are mental cases. It is true that some 21,000 of these men cannot prove that their plight is traceable to their military service, but they are on Uncle Sam's expense list just the same, and they would not be if they had been kept out of the army in the first place. Of course, all of these 9,000 mental cases could not have been spotted by the draft boards in 1917 and 1918. Not all cases of mental weakness or potential weakness can be spotted now. But the army now has a wealth of experience on the subject and the Veterans Administration is co-operating with many local boards in this effort Twenty years study has made these government doctors expert in discovering hidden weaknesses weak-nesses in the human mind. Some of the nation's greatest psychiatrists have offered their services to the army. Today, of course, there are many reasons why mental qualifications count more than in the last war. In the first place, modern warfare requires re-quires greater self-discipline on the part of the individual. Special Training Needed In the old army the squad, composed com-posed of seven or eight men, was a unit. The squad has now been abolished. Modern ordnance small and heavy arms is much more complicated. Each man must be specially trained for a special task and frequently the responsibility formerly relegated to a group, falls on the individual. Greater skill to operate modern arms and equipment is necessary. Also, the devastating effect of mechanization mech-anization creates a greater mental strain. An example of this is the terrorizing effect of the noise of dive bombers. When the French troops first heard the stukas they threw down their arms and fell flat on the earth. As Dr. Martin Cooley, consultant of the Veterans Bureau in Washington, Washing-ton, puts it: "When one considers how the warfare war-fare of today has stepped up in intensity in-tensity and tempo with the-stuka divers, the panzer divisions, the elements ele-ments of deadly surprise and audacity audac-ity and the dropping of bombs of high explosives weighing as much as a ton, it becomes evident that combat com-bat troops will have an immense |
