charged from the armed services. More than 1,250,000 of these have suffered some disability. Another 545,000 are reported in Army and Navy hospitals in this country and abroad. More disabled veterans are receiving payments, thus far, than the total for the last war.

SWIFT REFORM NEEDED

With the surrender of Japan, you must prepare now for discharges in the millions. Reorganization, modernization, and expansion of the Veterans' Administration cannot be delayed. Unless there is prompt, corrective action, the disillusionment and bitterness that have spread among some veterans and their kin will steadily worsen. Aggravating your difficulties is the fact that the human side of demobilization is being neglected tragically.

Solution of the veterans' problems does not-cannot-proceed alone. During the period when our soldiers and sailors will be shredding their uniforms, six to eight million workers in strictly war industries will be shifting jobs or homes. The ultimate goal of any veterans' program must be to restore the returning soldier and sailor to the community-socially, economically, and humanly. This cannot be accomplished except as part of the larger program embracing the whole of human demobilization. One terrible danger of failure may be to set the veteran off from the rest of the Nation, cherishing the grievance of having been wronged, at odds with fellow Americans, his feelings an explosive fuel ready to be ignited by some future demagogs.

END HUMAN "NO MAN'S LAND"

There now prevails a "no man's land" of neglect of the human problems of the change-over from war to peace. The very first need in the present situation is: I. A vigorous, imaginative "work director," to vitalize the post of Administrator of retraining and reemployment to accomplish its original purpose of making certain the human side of demobilization is not forgotten.

This is beyond your own authority. I emphasize it because until this post is effectively filled, you will be hampered in the execution of your own responsibilities. So will be every other administrator of the many aspects of demobilization.

The concept of work director can be briefly summarized. Between the many agencies involved in the demobilization there exist all sorts of twilight zones or gaps of responsibility, innumerable overlappings or conflcts of authority. We wanted to avoid the human problems falling, uncared for, between the agencies. Therefore, the Report on War and Postwar Adjustment Policies, which I prepared that there be a single unforgetful mind to unify all of the forces of the executive branch dealing with the human side of demobilization and to develop a comprehensive program for meeting these problems, working with Congress. This work director, as we called him, later was given the official title of administrator of retraining and reemployment. We consider this post so important, we recommended that it be filled by a man of such outstanding caliber as to command the immediate confidence of the country.

Unfortunately, although 18 months have passed since the issuance of our report on February 15, 1944, and almost a year since Congress created the necessary office, an effective program of human demobilization still is lacking.

Among the things for which you should be able to look to the work director are:

REVIEW DEMOBILIZATION PLANS

1. To maintain a running review of the plans for demobilizing the armed forces, discharge procedures and policies of both the Army and Navy, harmonizing and integrating their programs with the whole of the change-over to peace.

RELEASE DOCTORS, HOSPITALS

2. Specifically, in this connection, to see that any faults in discharge procedures are promptly corrected, as the too loose use of the label "psychoneurotic" in medical discharges in the past; also, to make certain that doctors, nurses, and hospitals are released from military service in proportion to the discharges of wounded and reductions in troop strengths. Otherwise, how are the Veterans' Administration or the communities to carry out their responsibilities to the wounded?

ONE CENTER TO A COMMUNITY

3. To see to it that in each community there is only one place where veterans need go-in dignity, not charity-to learn all of their rights and how to get them. This was one of the more urgent recommendations in our postwar report. In too many communities, veterans still are being given the run-around from agency to agency. Where such all-in-one centers have been established, as in Bridgeport, Conn., Richmond, Va., or Los Angeles, Calif., they have eased the handling of every veteran problem, medical care, benefits, loans, employment. A network of such centers would contribute greatly to any plans of yours for decentralizing the Veterans' Administration.

JOBS AND TRAINING

4. To develop a unified, detailed employment and training program, anticipating as far as practical the needs of both veterans and displaced war workers. This would include settling the conflict in interpretation over section 8 of the Selective Service Act on seniority rights (or request Congress to clarify the law); other seniority problems; special programs for the disabled; adequate job placement machinery for all workers; personalized job guidance, particularly for veterans who have never worked before; working with both labor unions and business groups in relaxing barriers to employment, such as initiation fees, apprenticeship rules, etc. This is especially important in those fields such as construction, which can provide a greater number of jobs in peace than during the war.

COMBAT BOTTLENECKS

5. While rationing, priorities, and other restrictions remain in force, this work director should see that veterans obtaining loans to start businesses receive the materials and commodities they need. The work director must not be content simply because a regulation has been issued but should see that it works.

ARTIFICIAL LIMBS

6. To step up and coordinate the artificial limb program, unifying the work of all agencies, so that all amputees are given the best possible limbs immediately and replacements provided for those who have received inferior limbs. Many of our wounded still are being fitted with legs and arms known to be inferior because production of newer types is slow; procurement has lacked drive and organization. Not until last January were the manufacturers of artificial legs brought together to develop standardized specifications. The committee on prosthetic devices of the National Research Council, now energetically pushing the improvement of designs for artificial legs and arms, held its first meeting only last March. Root of the delay has been that no one administrator took full responsibility for organizing and driving through a completely worked out artificial limb program.

WHAT VETERANS SHOULD KNOW

7. To develop an effective program for informing veterans of what they need to know. They should be reached while still in service and after their return to civilion life when their problems are actually upon them. Many agencies must share in this program; the work director should take the leadership, coordinating the efforts of all.

Those are only a few of the tasks of the work director, whose scope covers the human problems of both veterans and war workers. His duties are more completely outlined in our postwar report and in the legislation creating the Office of Reemployment and Retraining. You may find yourself compelled to move into some of those gaps dealing directly with these matters.

CREATE NEW MEDICAL SERVICE

Turning to the Veterans' Administration, I would recommend:

II. A clean-cut division in the veterans' agency between medical and nonmedical matters, creating a new veterans' medical service under the head of an outstanding medical man.

Until now veterans' medical care has been too much subordinated to the legal and fiscal matters connected with benefits of all kinds. It must be freed from

the thumb of the lawyer and benefit payer. Lifted to a level of autonomous independence, its primary emphasis should be the quickest and fullest recovery of the veteran and his or her return to society as a self-supporting, self-respecting citizen.

Various suggestions have been made as to the form this new veterans' medical service should take. None of these details of organization are as important as is the choice of the man who is to head this service. Even a good man and an autonomous service by themselves are not enough. A complete transformation of veterans' medical care is needed.

IMPARTIAL MEDICAL STUDY

III. A small, fast-working, independent committee should be named to make an impartial study of every aspect of veterans' medical care, formulating recommendations for completely transforming the veterans' medical service into one that provides a challenge to all that is progressive in medical practice.

This committee need not attempt a single, huge study, but could take up successively the many different problems, reporting its findings as it went along. Its work should be organized to supplement-not delay-any immediate reforms that the new medical director will wish to put into effect. Its immediate studies completed and made public through you, some such committee should be established on a permanent basis. It would serve as a continuing review group, reporting regularly to the public through you on the progress in improving veterans' medical care; recommending any additional measures that may become necessary; making certain the latest scientific techniques are properly instituted as soon as proven.

I urge that reports of this committee be made public because of the sharp, prolonged criticism of veterans' medical care. An independent sifting of the charges that have been made and announcement of reforms to correct whatever faults may be found is necessary to restore the confidence of the public, including the veterans and their families. Many of the measures you will wish to adopt will require public understanding and support. Fully publicizing your new medical program also will immediately raise the prestige of the new veterans' medical service. This is so necessary if sufficient numbers of new doctors of high quality so sorely needed-are to be attracted to the service.

MERIT, NOT SENIORITY

Recruiting new, good doctors is of such importance in any program for improving veterans' medical care I would recommend:

IV. Substantial increases in salaries of doctors, nurses, technicians, and others in the new medical service; a promotion system based on professional ability and skill against waiting in the line of seniority; freeing doctors of needless paper work through more efficient hospital administration; ample opportunities for doctors to grow professionally through postgraduate and refresher studies and through effective ties with centers of medical education and skill; the establishment of ample research facilities and encouragement of research by veterans' doctors.

Among the matters which should be include 1 in the impartial study by the medical committee are:

PSYCHIATRIC NEED GREAT

1. A psychiatric program, both immediate and long range. This is, perhaps, the field where there is the widest gap between need and established medical facilities. Already several hundred thousand so-called psychoneurotics have been discharged from the armed services. (One out of every four or five appearing before selective service was rejected for some type of mental disease or nervous defect.) Yet in the entire country there are reported to be only about 3,500 trained psychiatrists, many of them in the service. Included in any long-range, psychiatric program should be plans for training a vastly greater personnel over the years; stimulated research; and a Nation-wide network of out-patient clinics, since most psychoneurotic ills can be treated without hospitalization. As an immediate measure quick training programs can be given, following the example of what the Army has done in the war.

2. Establishment of a system of interships and residences in veterans' hospitals. 3. In place of the present medical organization so largely geared to hospitaliza

tion, to develop a more flexible system of medical care which will include greater emphasis on out-patient clinics for veterans who do not need hospitalization; more extended use of local physicians and medical facilities; rehabilitation centers, sheltered workshops, and other modern developments.

NEW HOSPITAL CONSTRUCTION

4. Revise the program of future veterans' hospital construction to allow for this new flexibility and for the goals of the new Veterans' Medical Service, with modern research facilities and with veterans' hospitals located so that closer contact can be maintained with established medical centers. Veterans' hospital construction must be integrated with new civilian hospital construction.

5. Shatter the hopeless defeatism that now prevails in the treatment of veterans who have been paralyzed through wounds to the spinal cord or key nerves. With the best modern care, it has been demonstrated, many patients now discarded to hopeless invalidism can be enabled to move about on their own and even become self-supporting.

6. Determine how to insure that the latest scientific and medical techniques are introduced in the treatment of every ailment.

LIAISON WITH MILITARY

7. Effective liaison between the new Veterans' Medical Service and the medical branches of the armed services. At present no liaison worthy of mentioning exists. Among the benefits would be the prompt funneling into the veterans' service of the latest medical advances developed during the war; the timing and organization of all medical discharges; coordinating medical records so that unnecessary duplication in records and examination can be eliminated. While the new Veterans' Medical Service is being reformed, you may want to devise a program by which the wounded will be kept under military medical care for a longer period. Arrangement could be made to give these wounded any necessary veterans' benefits.

REDUCE "PENSIONITIS"

8. Examine the present pension system, both in administration and legislation, to eliminate or reduce deterrents to full recovery or incentives to malingering, while still retaining just compensation for disability. I am informed by many doctors that in certain cases benefits do the patient more harm than good, by encouraging so-called pensionitis. No veteran should be deprived of any pension or benefit rightfully due him. But surely a system can be developed which will give the veteran his just allowance and still not hamper his physical recovery. Perhaps no aspect of veterans' medical reform is more important. Many so-called phychoneurotics could be left mental cripples for life, as if victims of botchy surgery, by an unwise pension and benefit system. This matter profoundly affects the whole of veterans' medical care in that it tends to breed cynicism and defeatism throughout the organization.

9. Study the problems raised by distinctions in medical care between disabilities which are service connected and those which are nonservice connected.

One

10. The Veterans' Administration's part in the artificial-limb program. thing I would like to see done is to have a continuous, progressive, limb-replacement program, since designs will steadily improve. A contact system should be set up now for all amputees-15,000 at present. This will speed replacements and aid in checking on the performance of various types of limbs, contributing to research and improvement.

DECENTRALIZE VETERANS' AGENCY

On the nonmedical side of the Veterans' Agency I would recommend:

V. That a similar, small, fast-working committee of impartial experts be named to review all nonmedical matters to formulate recommendations for simplifying, modernizing, and decentralizing the operations of the agency.

This committee should go into the speeding of payments of every kind while still protecting the public interest. Doubtless you have seen complaints of delays in settling death claims and disability pensions; of veterans who have protested that they were forced to leave school because their checks for living allowances did not come through. The enormous volume of veterans' laws needs codifying; the mass of regulations simplifying. I would turn this committee loose on each

and every program in your agency. One looming problem will be the peacetime conversion of the life insurance held by veterans. With its $136,000,000,000 of face-value policies, the Veterans' Administration runs the largest insurance business in the world.

Once this committee had completed its immediate tasks, I would have it set up as a permanent group constantly reviewing and simplifying procedure. In operations of such magnitude there must be an unceasing battle against creeping red tape and needless paper work.

OVERHAUL GI RIGHTS

VI. The so-called GI bill of rights should be overhauled, particularly regarding GI loans, whose provisions should be made effective over 10 years instead of 2, the percentage of guaranty raised, and working capital provided.

Congress is quite alert to the need for such changes, and I believe swift corrective action can be had if you use your executive ability to bring together the best thoughts of the executive branch on these matters with those of the Congress. I would suggest, therefore, that you name several persons to make an extensive study of all the numerous features of veteran legislation that need amending and to work with Congress on this whole matter.

As an example of how loosely drawn some features of the GI law are, under the act each enlisted veteran is authorized to borrow for either the purchase of a home or farm or to go into business, but this must be done in 2 years. The Government will guarantee $2,000 of such loans. Let us say, the unguaranteed portion is another $2,000 or $4,000 in all. If one-half the 10,000,000 eligible veterans take advantage of it, that means $20,000,000,000 of borrowings. Think of that pressure going into the market for homes, farms, or businesses in 2 years. What a harvest high-pressure salesmen will reap unless the time is extended. Spread over 10 years the GI loans can serve as a stabilizing force, humanly as well as economically. Many veterans may prefer attending school before buying a home, farm, or business. Others, who plan on going into business, will have a better chance to succeed if they first gain experience by taking a job in the particular line.

For veterans really to be helped into business, the present 50-percent guaranty on business loans is too low. In New Jersey, a 90-percent guaranty is provided by State law. Much of the red tape that has proven so frustrating to veterans can be reduced by devising a system by which loans are made virtually automatic on approval by the local bank.

PROTECT AGAINST INFLATION

Extending the time limit of veterans' loans to 10 years will go far to relieve restrictive effects of the requirement in the present law forbidding loans where the purchase price is above reasonable normal value. This provision was put into the bill to guard veterans against purchasing properties at inflated wartime levels, only to have to repay these debts in deflated dollars. In wartime markets it is not easy to find properties that have not become inflated above their reasonable normal value. Over a 10-year period, market values should tend to be more normal.

GI TAX INCENTIVE

It is no benefit to the veteran to give him a loan he cannot repay, chaining him to debt like a galley slave. At current tax rates few new enterprises could be made to pay for themselves in any reasonable period. I would recommend to the Congress :

VII. That an incentive tax of 25 percent less than the normal rate be given veterans opening new businesses, this difference to be applied in repayment of their loans up to $25,000.

I feel this special tax incentive for veterans necessary because, with the pressures for inflation that now prevail, it would not be safe to embark on too drastic a general tax reduction at this time.

ONE HOME-LOAN PLAN

With home loans, veterans are finding the law confusing in that two different methods for home financing are embodied in the law, each having certain advantages. The best in both plans should be merged into a single arrangement