Senator CANNON. The next witness will be Congressman James C. Cleveland.

Congressman Cleveland, we are very happy to have you here. We are sorry that we were delayed in getting to you, but we are happy to receive your testimony now.

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES C. CLEVELAND, A U.S. REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE SECOND DISTRICT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

Mr. CLEVELAND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have enjoyed the hearings, and I have learned a good deal by listening to Dr. Terry and Senator Goldwater.

Before I forget it, I thought that perhaps the Senator overlooked one item when he was discussing this recomputation, which is the principle I am in favor of, having voted for the amendment in the House.

It is a great advantage, it seems to me, to make it attractive for some of the older and senior officers to retire perhaps before they have reached mandatory retirement age, because this in effect gives great opportunity to those younger and promising officers down the line for advancement.

This is something, I know, has been true in some industries where they have arbitrarily retired some officers in organizations before the mandatory age, and one of the reasons given is that this creates openings and opportunities for the younger and more promising people. That is not the point I came over here to make, however, Mr. Chairman. I came over to support the bill generally, the principle of recomputation and the family separation pay particularly, but I am most interested in a small part of this bill, but what I consider to be a very important part of the bill, and this is the hostile pay amendment which was added on the floor of the House with an additional amendment of my own, which made hostile pay retroactive.

I was interested in this particularly when it came on the floor of the House, because I am a veteran of World War II and the Korean war, and I hasten to add I am no longer associated with the military. I have retired. I am not a member of the Reserve.

I think the hostile pay, however, is tremendously important as a morale measure. I think it is important to those people who are actually engaging the enemy now, and I think it is also important that it is an indication of our firmness in regard to our total support of those people.

The matters have been brought home to me particularly, Mr. Chairman, because in my district two families have lost sons in South Vietnam, and this is a pitifully small thing, but it is important, and I hope that this committee will continue the hostile pay amendment in the bill, and I hope they will continue the retroactive feature of it.

That is my statement, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. Senator CANNON. Do you have an estimate of the number of people that would be involved in the retroactive features of the bill?

Mr. CLEVELAND. No, sir; I do not. I know that the matter we are talking about is a matter of very few millions of dollars, if it is even a million dollars, and I speak only for two people that I happen to know.

One was killed a year ago in June, and one was killed last May. The amount of money involved is trivial, but if we adopt the principle of the hostile amendment, I think it certainly should go back as the amendment does to the beginning of the hostilities in South Vietnam.

Senator CANNON. Of course, as you know, one of the big problems that the Congress has, consistently, is the problem of considering retroactive provisions which are inherently generally not favored. That, I am sure, would be the problem in connection with this; the question of the retroactive provision as to whether it should be made retroactive because of other problems that arise; if every time a bill comes in; if you attempt to make a retroactive provision.

Mr. CLEVELAND. It is true; I understand the principle, but in this particular case, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me well, let's put it this way: Two wrongs don't make a right. I think hostile pay probably should have been adopted earlier, and now that it has been adopted, and I hope it will be approved by this committee and the Senator, I think we can go back to correct this feature.

Senator CANNON. I agree with you that if it is to be adopted, perhaps it should have been adopted earlier. But that is the same way as the whole pay bill. The whole pay bill should have been adotped earlier but, as you and I well know, Congress is not about to make the whole pay bill retroactive to 1961, or even to 1962, because of the general problem that we have in connection with retroactive money legislation.

I am advised by the committee staff that the retroactive features of this; the cost would be $2.2 million, so we will have that in the record. Thank you very much, Congressman Cleveland. We appreciate your appearance here in testifying in support of your amendment which was adopted to the bill.

The committee will now stand in recess until 2:30 this afternoon. (Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the committee recessed to reconvene at 2:30 p.m., of the same day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

(Present: Senators Cannon (chairman), Ervin, Young, and Saltonstall.)

Senator CANNON. The subcommittee will come to order. The first witness this afternoon will be Dr. Gideon L. Lang.

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Senator ERVIN. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say, Dr. Lang is one my finest constituents and a personal friend, and I am delighted to have an opportunity to hear his statement.

Senator CANNON. We are certainly happy to have him here and to have Senator Ervin welcome you here, Dr. Lang. You may proceed as you wish.

STATEMENT OF GIDEON L. LANG, JR., O.D., ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN OPTOMETRIC ASSOCIATION; ACCOMPANIED BY WILLIAM P. MacCRACKEN, COUNSEL, WASHINGTON OFFICE, AMERICAN OPTOMETRIC ASSOCIATION; AND DAVID SHARMAN, DIRECTOR OF THE WASHINGTON OFFICE,, AMERICAN OPTOMETRIC ASSOCIATION

Dr. LANG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. May I say I appreciate the kind words of my friend, Senator Ervin. I have with me, Mr. Chairman, the Washington counsel for the American Optometric Association, Mr. William P. MacCracken, who himself is quite an historical figure, being one of aviation's aviators from the very beginning. I also have the director of our Washington office, Dr. David Sharman; and last but not least, my moral support, my wife, who came up to hold my hand in case it got too rough.

My name is Gideon L. Lang. I am an optometrist practicing my profession in Concord, N.C. During World War II I served as an optometrist and a noncommissioned officer. Following my discharge, from that service, I applied for a commission in the Medical Service Corps of the Naval Reserve, in which I now hold the rank of lieutenant commander with over 15 years of service, part on active duty and part on inactive duty. My services include duty as commanding officer of the Naval Reserve company in my own community. Currently, I am attending Naval Officers School in Charlotte, N.C.

My appearance before you is as a member of the Department of National Affairs of the American Optometric Association and as chairman of its committee on military affairs.

At present there are approximately 450 optometrists on active duty in the armed services and several times that number who hold commissions in the Reserve but are not presently on active duty.

There are some 18,000 optometrists practicing in the 50 States and the District of Columbia. More than 60 percent of them are members of our association. All 50 States and the District of Columbia have laws which require an individual desiring to practice optometry to pass an examination to prove his qualifications before he can be licensed. In order to take the examination, the candidate must have successfully completed a minimum of 5 years of college work in an accredited school or college, 3 years of which are devoted to subjects directly pertaining to optometry. Most of the schools and colleges require a sixth year before granting a doctorate degree and at least 7 years for a Ph. D. degree in physiological optics. Over 61 percent of the students in the colleges and universities teaching optometry have completed more than the minimum requirement of preprofessional study.

A dentist is required to have a minimum of 2 years of predental study and 4 years of dental school. A veterinarian must meet similar requirements. Some medical schools require only a little over 2 years of premedical work, 4 years of medicine, with a fifth year as intern. A high school graduate could start out tomorrow and, if he applied himself, could be licensed to practice medicine in a period of 7 years. I hasten to say that probably most physicians spend 4 years in premedical study.

Permit me to touch briefly upon the importance of vision to our armed services.

Now I sat here in this hearing yesterday and I observed the members of the committee and I observed the witnesses and I thought to myself how important vision was, because as these members of the committee picked up their papers to read—at least most of them— they had to put on a visual aid. Glasses, contact lens, aids to the partially sighted, devices; there are a number of things which we prescribe in order to improve vision.

Even during World War II, Ohio State University, where one of our schools of optometry is located, carried on for the Government a course in visual training known as aircraft recognition. The purpose of this course was to enable the men to more quickly and correctly recognize the various types of aircraft which were then in use. None of them could even approach-let alone exceed-the speed of sound. Today the vast majority of military aircraft travel at rates of speed exceeding the speed of sound several times and at altitudes approaching the stratosphere.

Our association has a committee on visual problems of aeronautics and space and members of our profession serving in the armed services are engaged in research projects in these fields. To cite an example of the scope of optometry's contributions to the armed services, our ranking optometrist in the Army, Col. John Sheridan, was awarded an Army citation for developing a corrective lens for gas masks.

Vision is important not only to the infantryman, the aviator, and the astronaut, but also to the men on the ground from the "dew line" in the Arctic to those in the Pentagon, and in the submarine service as well. Every single man that I can recall sitting at this table yesterday from the Secretaries to the assistants, high-ranking officers, I believe that their work would be stymied, because all of them put their glasses on when they began to read, or had something to say about their statement. I thought to myself if they were not allowed to have good vision, how much slower would their operations be. So I think that vision is pretty important.

Optometrists can select those individuals whose vision best qualifies them for a particular assignment and can train them to make the best possible use of their visual capabilities. This was done for our coast artillery at Fortress Monroe during World War II when members of our profession selected the men whose vision best qualified them to man the antiaircraft guns and then trained them so that the scoring improved from 20 to 30 percent. At that time the Army, at the behest of the AMA, refused to commission optometrists and let them practice their profession, so the coast artillery, in order to meet the visual needs of their guncrews, commissioned some optometrists as coast artillery officers and then assigned them to duty as optometrists. This was only a small part of the evidence produced in 1945 and 1946 when Congress unanimously passed a bill establishing an Optometry Corps in the Army. As the outcome of this, in 1947 when our Armed Forces were being reorganized, Congress provided for the commissioning of optometrists in the Medical Service Corps of both the Army and Navy in the Regular service and in the Reserve. It was later that Congress

established the third arm of our defense, the Air Force, with the result that our men serving in that arm have always been commissioned. You gentlemen realize the importance of keeping specially qualified personnel in the armed services. In fact, that is one of the main purposes of the legislation now under consideration. Our association and its committee on military affairs have always urged our men in the service to make military optometry a career. We must admit our failure, except in the case of the Navy. The reason for that is that during World War II Admiral McIntyre, who was himself an ophthalmologist as well as Surgeon General of the Navy, appreciated the importance of vision and the service which our profession could render. The result was that he commissioned optometrists and permitted them to practice their profession in ranks ranging from ensign to lieutenant commander. Following the passage of the medical service corps law, a substantial number of these optometrists who held reserve commissions in the Navy transferred to the regular service. The result is that we have on active duty in the Navy more men with ranks of lieutenant commander, commander, and captain than we have as ensigns.

Perhaps you have often heard it said that optometry is the first line of defense in the prevention of blindness in America. Optometry is indispensable to the first line of national defense, be it Army, Navy, or Air Force. Notwithstanding this, an optometrist who has graduated from one of our approved colleges or universities and passed a State board of examination is commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army or Air Force and as an ensign in the Navy. The young medical doctor can serve his internship in the Navy with the rank and pay of a full lieutenant. If he has completed his internship, he is commissioned as a captain in the Army or Air Force or a full lieutenant in the Navy.

Dental officers are now accorded the initial rank of captain in the Army and Air Force and full lieutenant in the Navy. The veterinarian, who has spent the same amount of time in preparation as the optometrist, is commissioned as a first lieutenant. All officers in these three other health professions are given longevity credit beginning the day they enter their professional school.

In addition to this injustice at the outset of an optometrist's military service, the Government adds insult to injury. All three of these groups from schools of medicine, dentistry, and veterinary medicine receive an extra $100 a month special pay. If the physician or dentist stays on active duty for more than his obligated 2 years of service, he receives special additional pay which may be as much as $250 a month depending upon the time on active duty. The physician who, at Government expense, is being trained as a flight surgeon, also receives his flying pay if he flies as much as 4 hours a month as an airplane passenger. While on active duty at Pensacola 5 years ago, I helped teach some flight surgeon students to examine eyes. They held the same rank as I did, even though I had 10 years of Federal service to my credit as an optometrist and they had only completed their internship. While their rank equaled mine, their pay was almost double. My own experience on active duty in the Navy leads me to believe that there are not enough optometrists to properly care for the visual needs of the men and women in our armed services. Recently a sur

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