The Counter Attack: Embattled Veterans. Ii
I
‘THE Legion,’ said National Commander Louis A. Johnson on the fifth of March, 1933, ‘wants nothing more than to be of service to America in this situation as our members were in 1917-1918.’
The situation was the national emergency in the midst of which Franklin D. Roosevelt took office. It was, in fact, as serious as a war, and more difficult, in that the President could not be certain of the support of the people. He was about to make demands of sacrifice. In a war he could count on universal patriotism which would make these sacrifices sure. In time of peace such unselfishness was more doubtful.
It must have heartened Mr. Roosevelt to have the pledge of support of so powerful an organization as the American Legion. His predecessor, Woodrow Wilson, had asked these men for patriotic service in the emergency of 1917, and they had responded with quick zeal. Now, sixteen years later, President Roosevelt was about to ask the same men for patriotic service in an emergency just as great if less spectacular. He was about to ask them to forgo, for the sake of the national credit, some of the annual gifts which through fourteen years generous Congresses (stimulated, to be sure, by a formidable lobby) had heaped upon them. So Commander Johnson’s pledge, broadcast over the radio on the day after the inauguration, was encouraging.
But, in the weeks that followed, a contradiction appeared between the words of the Legion Commander and the activities of the Legion lobby. On March 9, for instance, four days after Mr. Johnson’s whole-hearted pledge of support, a curious telegram went out from the office of the lobby in Washington to all department adjutants and executive committeemen of the Legion. ‘Wire your Congressmen and Senators immediately,’ said this exigent message, ‘opposing Congress abdicating its constitutional responsibility by granting to the President authority to repeal or amend existing veterans’ laws without approval of Congress.’
The President had not yet made any demands on the ex-soldiers. The lobby, however, had foreseen that he intended shortly to do so. Colonel John Thomas Taylor, chief lobbyist for the Legion, who, according to his own statement, caused this telegram to be sent, had made an excellent guess. For on the next day, March 10, the President, after explaining that the government was ‘on the road to bankruptcy,’ told Congress that ‘ provision for additional saving is essential, and therefore I am asking the Congress to-day for new legislation laying down broad principles for the granting of pensions and other veteran benefits and giving to the Executive the authority to prescribe the administrative details.’
The President, then, was counting on the support pledged by the right hand of the Legion at the very moment that its left hand was commanding Congress to oppose him.
On this same day, immediately after the President’s message had confirmed his fears, Colonel Taylor wrote to all Senators and Congressmen: . . The members of Congress might transfer their authority to the Executive, but they cannot transfer the tremendous responsibility that will rest upon them for the results of their action.’
And, turning from Congress to the Legion, he then sent the following telegram to all department adjutants and executive committeemen: ‘Attempt will be made to jam through Senate and House bills to reduce veterans’ benefits four hundred million dollars. Situation requires you to put down immediate barrage on all Senators and Congressmen insisting they vote against Administration bills. . .‘
A barrage, it must be explained, is the Legion lobby jargon for the deluge of telegrams from members which for years the lobby has commanded to be ‘ put down ’ on Senators and Representatives whenever veteran subsidies have been threatened.
II
One would suppose, at this point, that some authority in the Legion — possibly Commander Johnson himself — might have seen a divergence between the pledge and the barrage, and would have done something to reconcile them. Mr. Johnson might have said, for instance, that on March 5, when he made the pledge, he had not dreamed the President was going to ask such sacrifices on the part of World War veterans. But instead of this he announced (after Congress had passed the President’s bill despite the barrage): ‘There is no question of Legion loyalty. The patriotism of every member has been proved in war service and in his peace-time devotion to the welfare of our country. . . . In this hour of emergency we are but eager to serve the Stars and Stripes again under whatever orders our new Commander in Chief may give. Many may disagree with the new law, but now in this crisis we must take his orders. . .‘
This statement must have surprised all the department adjutants and individual members who had executed the barrage; it should also have astonished Colonel Taylor of the lobby, but it did not deter him from sending out to all departments and posts a 32-page bulletin with the instruction: ‘Give this wide publicity.’ The bulletin contained the President’s bill in full, the story of its passage, and the lobby’s vehement criticism.
‘World War Veterans,’ says page one of this bulletin, ‘may well ask how such drastic repeal legislation could be rushed through Congress. . . .
‘The bill itself was prepared in secret. Until it was introduced in the House, no one knew its contents. Carefully choosing the time, President Roosevelt shot it to the Congress for immediate action on the plea of “maintaining the credit of the United States Government. . . .”
‘The Legion put up a tremendous fight. Department officials, posts, and disabled men lying in hospitals literally poured in telegrams.’
The bill must certainly have appeared drastic to the Legion. It repealed practically all of the laws which for ten years or more the lobby had caused to be written on the statute books. It threatened a reduction in pensions of some $400,000,000.
It would not have been surprising, therefore, if Commander Johnson had, after thinking it over and consulting Colonel Taylor, decided to modify his pledge. Instead of this, on April 24, more than a month after the passage of the bill, he said to the American Red Cross: ‘When the Economy Act was passed, I issued a statement declaring that our country needed a reawakening of the spirit of patriotism that drove us on to victory in 1917 and 1918.... I have not and do not retract one word of that call to service and I tell you the Legion has responded magnificently. In an organization of more than a million men ... it would be unreasonable to expect everyone to hold the same view. But the vast majority in the Legion and the Auxiliary have reaffirmed their readiness to again make the sacrifice for the good of their country and have pledged their support to our President.’
Thus we had, in the spring of 1933, the curious spectacle of the National Commander of the American Legion reiterating before the public the Legion’s pledge to the President and, simultaneously, the Legislative Committee (which the Legion does not call its lobby) bringing every sort of pressure upon departments, posts, and individual members to oppose him.
III
One reason for the passage of the President’s bill ‘to maintain the credit of the United States Government’ was the fact that, watching this strange two-faced game, the Legion itself became divided. In an organization of more than a million men, as Commander Johnson said (stretching the elastic membership figures almost to the breaking point), it would be ‘unreasonable’ to expect complete unanimity. It would be especially unreasonable, I should think, while the members were being bombarded by their own officials with two diametrically opposite views, each supposed to be orthodox. The result was that many members took the speeches of their National Commander seriously and actually rallied to the President’s support against their own apparent interests.
Thus Commander George W. Lawrence of the Department of New York, getting Colonel Taylor’s order to put down a barrage, refused bluntly. Many Legion posts made independent resolutions of support. The Leonard S. Morange Post No. 464 of Bronxville called a special meeting to pass such a resolution, and it condemned the Legion lobby in the following vigorous words: —
‘The Legislative Committee, originally designed to be the servant of the American Legion, is in a fair way to become its master, and is now known as the strongest and most feared lobby in Washington, resorting to political intimidation to work its will on the Congress. . . .’ The resolution went on to recommend ‘the immediate and permanent abolition of the National Legislative Committee . . . including the well-known Washington Lobby as at present operated and maintained.’
The result of this division of feeling was that, when the Economy Bill was up before the House and the Senate, the barrage ordered by Colonel Taylor met a counter barrage which swamped it. In his 32-page bulletin Colonel Taylor complains, speaking of the telegrams, that ‘for every one sent in by a disabled soldier, our opponents sent in three.’
Colonel Taylor implies that the opponents were non-veterans. As a matter of fact, they were not. Most of them were veterans. They were veterans who, like the members of the Leonard Morange Post, were incensed against the lobby. The first real doubt of the solidarity of the veteran vote was thus communicated to Congress; feeling this doubt, and at the same time swayed by party loyalty and the pressure of public opinion in general, Congress passed the bill. Without that doubt, the bill would not have passed. So, in this moment at least, the tyranny of the Legion dictatorship failed. And this failure was due, largely, to the attempt of the National Legislative Committee to nullify the pledge of the National Commander.
IV
The division in the Legion and the formation of a new, dissenting veteran organization were not, however, developments of a moment. They had begun to mature in the summer of 1932.
The first ‘bonus army’ which advanced on Washington in that summer sharpened the feelings of veterans everywhere. The bonus army was not the creature of the Legion. Many persons, however, some of them Legionnaires, believed it to be so. The remarks of Representative Blanton (widely quoted), who from the floor of the House addressed galleries full of bonus marchers, saying, ‘You American Legion boys stay in Washington just as long as you damned please,’ did not help the confusion. Therefore many Legionnaires, disgusted by the spectacle of the bonus army, became at the same time disgusted with the Legion, while many others were angered at President Hoover’s eviction of the marchers and wanted the Legion to declare itself openly in favor of bonus prepayment.
In the convention of the Legion in Portland in the fall of 1932, there occurred an odd succession of resolutions. First, passed by a large majority, was the resolution demanding immediate payment in full of the bonus due in 1945. Next was the adoption of a ‘legislative programme’ which asked for compensation for veterans’ widows regardless of the cause of death, and for the advancement to 1941 of the date of a veteran’s marriage to which this provision would apply — these things at an increased annual cost of $100,000,000 to the people. The programme further demanded the removal of the ‘needs’ clause from existing veteran legislation. Finally, to everyone’s surprise, came a resolution introduced by Commander Johnson creating a Legion committee to investigate all veteran laws with the intent of bringing about economies in veteran costs!
Again a startling paradox — a flood of extravagant demands followed by a moment of fear. And the fear spread. As day by day the nation drew nearer to its economic crisis, individual Legion members and several entire posts saw that the extravagance could not go on. Some fifteen posts went on record as opposing the new programme.
And in the meantime two organizations had grown to power. The National Economy League, organized by veterans, had revealed the startling amount of annual veteran costs and showed how this sum could be cut in two without affecting a single case of a truly war-disabled ex-service man.
Then there was the American Veterans Association, composed exclusively of ex-service men, which had taken many Legionnaires from the Legion. The cry of this body was for justice: ‘Justice to the war wounded, justice to the war dead, justice to the American people.’ The association started a campaign of publicity to point out that many living veterans only partly disabled were receiving more compensation than widows of men killed in action; that it was not fair to the wardisabled to pay compensation to peacedisabled veterans; that it was not fair to the people to ask for $450,000,000 annually for veterans (of all wars) who had emerged from the conflict safe and sound.
The insurgent Willard Straight Post of the Legion had sent a vigorous telegram to Legion headquarters protesting against the inequalities between widows’ pensions and compensation to living peace-disabled veterans, concluding with the arresting question: ‘Is this because dead men cast no votes?’
So the more perspicacious members even of the ’lame duck’ Congress must have suspected that the veteran vote was losing power. Yet the intimidation of the lobby held sway to the very end of the session, and both houses passed the Independent Offices Bill calling for an appropriation of $945,988,634 for veteran benefits. The veto of this bill was the last official act of President Hoover.
V
It would be impossible here to give in detail the provisions of the President’s Economy Bill which was intended to cut about $400,000,000 from veteran benefits. It is important, however, to consider the general intent of the bill and how far it carried out this intent.
We must remember first that all Spanish-American and World War veteran benefits provided by law are divided in two parts: (1) benefits to veterans disabled in line of duty in war service; (2) benefits to veterans disabled in civilian activities after discharge, the benefits granted merely because the men once wore the uniform.
Between these groups run the ‘presumptive’ cases. In 1924 a law was passed ‘presuming’ all cases of tuberculosis developing up to January 1, 1925, in World War veterans to have originated in the war regardless of evidence to the contrary, and laying down similar presumption with respect to nervous diseases unless there was evidence to show they had originated otherwise.
It was this presumptive legislation which brought about pensions to persons admittedly disabled in civilian occupations. In 1930, when presumption could not be stretched further without making disabled veterans ridiculous (not to mention medical science), the notorious Disability Allowance Act was passed, providing for cash compensation to World War veterans 25 per cent disabled from automobile accidents or colds caught in drafty rooms — at an annual cost to the people of $104,000,000.
The President wanted to remove all these ‘peace veterans’ from the rolls while keeping the true war sufferers. This seemed to most citizens and to many veterans a square deal. To the Legion lobby, surprisingly, it did not seem so. For on March 13, while the bill hung in the Senate, Mr. Ray Murphy, chairman of the Legislative Committee (who usually remains in the background while Colonel Taylor does the work), came out with this amazing statement: ‘ In the presence of existing conditions and the need for economy, the American Legion, unwilling that the basic structure of World War Veterans’ relief be destroyed, is willing to make its full contribution to sound credit ... by supporting a 25 per cent reduction in World War Veterans’ benefits.’
In other words, the Legion lobby was supporting a 25 per cent horizontal cut which would affect true war cases equally with those which had nothing whatever to do with the war. The lobby was willing to cut 25 per cent off the compensation of a man crippled for life by a shell in the Argonne in order to keep on the pension rolls the man hurt in 1932 by the skidding of a car. In view of the Legion’s traditional ‘first duty’ to the war disabled, this last-minute effort to preserve the ‘ basic structure’ caused astonishment and shock throughout the nation.
Yet to those who, for the past ten years, had followed the lobby’s complicated activities, there was no surprise. To them it was evident that ‘preserving the basic structure of veterans’ relief’ meant preserving the basic structure of the Legion. The great majority of Legionnaires had been healthy men when the war ended. To remove the ‘peace veterans’ from the pension rolls might also remove them from Legion membership. More important still (because the Legion contains only a fraction of World War veterans), it might alienate many non-Legionnaires, peace veterans, who could be induced to join if the Legion backed legislation which would benefit them.
VI
Congress rejected the 25 per cent horizontal cut and backed the President’s intent to cut the peace-disabled veteran. It did not, however, go all the way in this, and neither did the President. Many people believe the new law did not make the dividing line sharp enough. It allowed certain reductions in true war cases. It permitted certain peace cases to remain, their compensation greatly reduced.
In asking Congress for such a drastic law, the President was confronted with difficult problems. He had to deal with a Congress which for years had been intimidated by the most powerful lobby Washington has ever known. He was faced with the question of cutting off entirely many totally disabled, helpless men without means of support who, though their troubles did not come from the war, had been living on doles voted by Congress. And he was faced with the necessity of saving $400,000,000 to maintain the government’s credit.
So the bill as it was passed was not absolutely clear-cut. It was the best compromise possible at the time. Congress, as we shall see, brought about another compromise later which further reduced the savings.
The bill as it was passed, becoming, on March 20, Public No. 2, gave broad powers to the President. It repealed all laws giving hospitalization, pensions, and compensation to Spanish War and World War veterans and made a new list of persons entitled to pensions. It did not prescribe the new pensions or the rating of disabilities, but stated that the President should do this by ‘regulations.’
When the bill was passed, — it took, in that dramatic national crisis, only five days to pass it, — the public eagerly awaited the President’s regulations which should dictate the administrative details. ‘The Legion,’ said Commander Johnson, ‘has every faith in the discretion, fairness, and justice with which the President will deal with this problem.’ ‘It is to be hoped,’ simultaneously explained Colonel Taylor in his voluminous bulletin, ‘that the rules and regulations will be so written as to soften the intent of the drastic legislation, and to this end we are now working.’
So, while the Commander had faith and the lobby worked, the President, paying no attention to either, got out the regulations in quick time. They softened nothing. On the contrary, estimates on the cuts made possible by the bill jumped from $383,000,000 to $410,000,000 as soon as the regulations appeared.
The regulations provided an entirely new and simpler schedule for rating disabilities. This raised some pensions and lowered others.
They abolished all pensions for World War presumptive disabilities arising more than a year after discharge.
They abolished all ‘disability allowances’ to non-service-connected cases except for permanent and total disability, and these they reduced 50 per cent.
They abolished ‘temporary disability’ in service-connected cases.
They abolished hospitalization of non-service-connected cases except in instances of permanent total disability and of tubercular or neuropsychiatric cases in which the patients were without means of support.
They abolished non-service disability pensions except for permanent total disability and, with regard to Spanish War veterans, old age, and reduced these.
They cut pensions to veterans living in foreign countries 50 per cent.
VII
As these regulations appeared, the President’s victory seemed complete. The veterans’ lobbies knew that it was not. The leaders of such organizations as the National Economy League and the American Veterans Association also knew it. The Senators and Representatives who had opposed the bill knew that there was still a chance to limit the application of the President’s regulations, and those who, fearfully, had voted for the bill saw an opportunity to recapture part of the veteran support.
The key to all this was in the Independent Offices Bill which Mr. Hoover as the last official act of his life as President had repudiated by a pocket veto. This bill had made the appropriations for veterans for the fiscal year. Since it had been vetoed, it was now necessary to introduce a new bill containing a new set of appropriations. Through this expedient it would be possible, the lobbies and their tools in Congress thought, to liberalize the provisions of Public No. 2. If Congress in an appropriation bill commands that certain sums be spent for certain purposes, these sums must be so spent regardless of other legislation.
Here, however, was a delicate situation. If Congress should present a bill which would destroy the effect of Public No. 2, the President would veto it and delay or prevent the appropriations. But if the bill made only a limited number of demands for liberalization, Congress might override his veto. The hope was that a compromise could be arranged which would overcome both these possibilities and yet protect the President and Congress from too much criticism.
From the moment the President’s regulations appeared, the lobbies began to work to destroy their effectiveness. In this activity we find not only Colonel Taylor’s Legion lobby, but the United Spanish War Veterans, aided by Rice Means of the National Tribune (a paper founded by a pension claim agent for pension propaganda), the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Disabled American Veterans.
The Spanish-American lobby was surprisingly powerful. This power has been explained to me by Congressmen as deriving from the fact that many Senators and Representatives are of the age of Spanish War veterans and are therefore sympathetic to their appeals. To younger men the power of veterans of such a minor military episode (compared with the World War) seems incredible. But we must remember also that the government, in giving Spanish War pensions, includes the Philippine Insurrection and the Boxer Rebellion. The Philippine Insurrection was by no means a trifling matter. It lasted two years and made severe demands on the men involved. So it happens that men like the average Senator or Congressman, to whom the events were contemporary and are still vivid, are naturally kind to these ex-warriors. And they have always been liberal in pensions because many of the records were lost and therefore doubts existed as to the eligibles. There was, furthermore, a large amount of disease — typhoid and tropical fevers — connected with the episodes. Thus it is understandable that in June some $20,000,000 estimated savings for Spanish War veterans and dependents were nullified — $15,000,000 of which were non-service-connected.
But, as usual, it was the Legion lobby which did the most effective work. From Colonel Taylor’s office, bulletins went out full of alarming news. Cuts to the disabled, he told his departments and posts, would come to 70 per cent. He generously included the Spanish War veterans, with which the Legion, presumably, has nothing to do. He implied, by speaking of ‘the disabled of these two wars and . . . the protection of the dependents of their dead,’ that these cuts applied to war casualties. He also ‘disclosed’ the news that regional offices of the Veterans’ Administration and even hospitals were to be shut. ‘Only burials,’ said one bulletin, ‘are to go on.’ The bulletins were sinister in implication, containing sentences beginning ‘it is not yet known,’ ‘rumors are current,’ and ‘now it seems.’ Many of these menaces never materialized, but the effect of the bulletins was to frighten veterans, their widows, and their families everywhere, and Congress and the Administration were deluged with tragic and panicky appeals.
In the meantime no cuts in war cases had, in fact, been made. The Veterans’ Administration was working overtime to unravel the formidable technicalities of veteran legislation. All claims were being reviewed. The Administration did its best to keep this work secret so that needless alarm should not spread until the real reductions could be determined. ‘I fear,’ said General Hines, Veteran Administrator, ‘that any new publicity given to preliminary estimates . . . will create unnecessary apprehension on the part of many.’
On May 10, Commander Louis Johnson conferred with President Roosevelt, who seems to have quieted his fears about ‘many of the injustices and severities of the Economy Act Regulations.’ (I quote from the Legion lobby’s bulletin of June 2.) At any rate, the following statement came shortly from the White House: —
‘As a result of conferences between the President, the National Commander of the American Legion, Louis Johnson, and the Director of the Budget, the following conclusions have been reached: —
‘As a result of the application of the veterans’ regulations, it now seems that the cut in compensation of serviceconnected World War Veterans with specific injuries has been deeper than was originally intended. The regulations and schedules in this respect will, therefore, be reviewed so as to effect more equitable levels of payment. . . .
‘ By reason of the burden incident to rerating and in order that undue hardship will not be imposed upon veterans . . . regional offices of the Veterans’ Administration will not be closed as has been reported, except where it has been clearly demonstrated that regional facilities are not necessary.
It is not contemplated that government hospitals will be closed pending a careful, studious survey of the entire hospital situation.
‘These conclusions are in line with the President’s original statement that the regulations and schedules would be drafted so as to effect the most humane possible treatment of veterans truly disabled in war service.’
How Commander Johnson explained to the President that the Legion wanted veterans truly disabled in the war reduced 25 per cent in pension in order to keep on the rolls veterans not disabled in war service has never been revealed.
It is obvious that the President was willing to listen patiently to complaints, and to meet them halfway. And it is undoubtedly true that there had been injustices in the estimates; that certain cuts of true war sufferers had been foreshadowed, though to no such extent as the Legion bulletins implied, nor, in fact, to the extent which the Legion lobby had itself advocated.
The President was not willing, however, to destroy his economy legislation in the way the stormy Senate wanted when the Independent Offices Bill arrived there on May 29.
VIII
For the embattled veterans the curtain rose on this sensational melodrama at a theatrical moment. Memorial Day, May 30, gave full opportunity for pointing to soldier graves and for eulogizing the departed ‘flower of our manhood.’ It was fortunate for surviving veterans that no ghosts spoke that day in the Senate chamber, for some of them would certainly have cried out against the actions of their luckier colleagues. No doubt, for instance, an unknown soldier would have remarked that during the entire course of the veteran lobby’s dictatorship the pensions accorded to widows of World War fighters killed in action had never been raised one cent. But dead men, as the Willard Straight Post had suggested, were not voting.
In the week that followed, extraordinary scenes were enacted. Senator after Senator read lists of constituents suffering from gunshot wounds who would be reduced to starvation by the proposed cuts. Some of these citations were just, but the whole controversy has been obscured by the following incidents and by later revelations of the facts behind them.
On June 12, Senator Bronson Cutting of New Mexico produced a tragic case. The man had been brought from Fort Bayard, New Mexico, to Washington.
‘The men at Fort Bayard,’ said the Senator, ‘sent him on here because, being unfamiliar with the rules of the Senate, they hoped I could introduce him to this floor so that the Senators could look with their own eyes on a living example of what the Economy Act was doing.’ Being unable to introduce the man on the floor, Senator Cutting did ‘the next best thing,’ which was to introduce him to several Senators outside and to have a photograph of the man made and passed around the Senate. The man was wasted by tuberculosis, which Senator Cutting and two other Senators protested was of war origin.
The records of the Veterans’ Administration reveal that this man was a soldier who had served several enlistments in the regular army, his first being in 1915. He was discharged in September 1919 after war service. He reënlisted immediately and was found to have no defects. He was discharged again in 1921 without defects, and once more reënlisted, passing another physical examination.
In April 1924, he applied for reinstatement and conversion of a lapsed insurance policy. He was then asked the question, ‘Are you now disabled on account of injury or disease? If so, state how.’ Answer, ‘No.’
In January 1925, he was discharged from the army on account of active tuberculosis. He is receiving benefits from his insurance policy on account of a permanent total rating effective August 11, 1925. In 1925, after the passage of the World War Veterans’ Act of 1924 extending presumption of tuberculosis to the end of that year, he put in a claim and was awarded compensation for statutory presumption, his disease having been presumed by law to have originated in the World War.
This man, under the President’s regulations, was about to have his pension reduced.
Another veteran, brought to Washington during this time as an exhibit, had suffered the amputation of both legs. He was taken to the White House at eleven o’clock one night and shown to the President as a tragic war case. The reduction of his pension was cited in the Senate as a glaring injustice to a war-disabled veteran. This man’s case file disclosed the following facts.
He entered the service in April 1917. He was discharged safe and sound in November 1917 because he was found to be under age.
In April 1919, five months after the Armistice, he reënlisted in the army. He was discharged in December 1919 with a surgeon’s certificate of disability, specifying ‘convalescent for lobar pneumonia and hernia.’ In 1923 he was treated for bronchitis. In 1924 he was treated for sub-acute arthritis and neurasthenia. In 1928 he was operated on for a rare affliction known as ‘ Buergher’s disease,’ and in 1931, as a consequence of this disease, both feet had to be amputated. Presumptive service connection was granted him on evidence of Buergher’s disease as a neuropsychiatric disease appearing before January 1, 1925. Calling the disease in this man’s case a war disability is stretching things a little, for the enlistment to which, by the remotest presumption, his trouble could be traced occurred after the war was over.
IX
If these two cases had been the only ones paraded during the debate, it would have been enough to cast a doubt on the authenticity of truly deserving pleas. But there were others. The confusion between war cases and non-war cases had been fostered for years by the Legion lobby, and, obviously, in June of this year the fog in the Senatorial mind had not cleared.
In the midst of the cries of mercy for all these heroes, Senator Trammell of Florida, an old friend of the veterans, moved an amendment to the Independent Offices Bill providing that no wardisabled veteran be cut more than 15 per cent. Before this could be voted on, Senator Connally of Texas moved a similar amendment substituting 25 for 15. In spite of all the dramatics, enough Senators came in on the nay vote to bring a tie, 42-42. Vice President Garner decided the tie by voting for the amendment. An estimate showed that it would restore $170,000,000 in benefits.
Before the bill went back to the House for conference with this amendment, the President called the Democratic leaders together and announced that he would veto a bill which threatened to destroy his economy programme. His objection to the Connally amendment was that it did not make the question of service connection clear and left all SpanishAmerican non-service-connected pensioners on the rolls.
The House conferees then evolved a compromise. This provided among other things that the 25 per cent limit of reductions could apply to direct service-connected disabilities; that compensation to widows and orphans of veterans should not be reduced; that all presumptive cases should be reviewed by special boards to be appointed by the President; that these boards should resolve all doubts in favor of the veteran, and that the burden of proof of non-service connection should rest on the government.
Under the President’s threat of veto, the House passed the compromise. The Senate, angered by the President’s domination of the House, rejected it, substituting another costly amendment. To a man, Republicans in the Senate voted for this amendment. So, when the bill went back to the House, loyal Democrats there announced that the question had become a party issue.
This helped the House to a decision, and, while the President wrote his veto message and prepared a radio speech to the nation, the House turned down the Senate amendment 208-177. So the bill, now dog-eared from the altercation, went back again to the Senate. The Senate argued half the night while galleries packed with veterans listened. At 1.20 in the morning of June 15, the tired Senators passed the bill. During the fight, the lobbyists of the SpanishAmerican War veterans had managed to reduce ‘old age’ from 62 to 55, but otherwise the President’s compromise stood. He signed the bill, which became Public No. 78. It nullified about $100,000,000 of the savings estimated under Public No. 2.
Under the new bill, new executive regulations were necessary. The most important of these was one requiring boards to review all presumptive cases. The boards will decide for each disabled veteran whether the presumption of ‘ service connection ’ is justified. Where a man has developed tuberculosis, say, or sleeping sickness, in 1924, the boards will examine his record to see if there is any possible reason for believing that the trouble originated through gassing, exposure, or neglect during the war period. If evidence is found proving another cause (as it was with Senator Cutting’s protégé), the veteran will be removed from the pension list.
It is conceivable that, by careful study of the cases, these boards may achieve real justice. They may, for instance, look more favorably upon a man who fought valiantly overseas in many engagements than on one who was a college boy during the war and who spent a few hours a week doing close order drill in the Student Army Training Corps without interrupting his college curriculum.
X
Many people believe that the President should have vetoed the Independent Offices Bill with its amendments. By doing so, they think, he might have ended the power of the veteran lobbies for all time.
Such action might, on the other hand, have aided the lobbies. Congress might have overridden his veto, and thus shown the lobbies that the new executive authority was, in reality, no authority at all. He might at the same time have weakened his own power, which it was absolutely necessary for him to retain if he was to put through the emergency work of his recovery programme. President Roosevelt is a practical man. A pure idealist in his position might, by insistence upon a principle, have destroyed all the steps already taken in the furtherance of that principle.
It is a hard question to answer, and the answer to it has no place here. Eventually, if we are to prevent the demoralization of those who defend the country in its emergencies, a new pension policy must be devised. Its broad principles might even be written into the Constitution. An amendment providing that no veteran of a war in which this nation is engaged shall receive a pension except for disability incurred in line of duty would certainly protect the morale of many patriotic citizens.
But our discussion here is of the veteran lobbies. The laws and regulations of this year are an advance over any legislation since the War Risk Insurance Act of 1917. Yet the grip of the lobbies is not broken. The American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Disabled American Veterans are active at the moment in getting their candidates appointed to the reviewing boards. In several instances they have been successful. The Legion lobby has broadcast statements urging veterans with presumptive disabilities to accumulate evidence to present to the boards.
The fight, I was told in Washington by an unquestioned authority, has only just begun. It will be, in the end, a fight for principle and not for temporary economy. A policy must eventually be found which will not demoralize the veteran while trying to help him. More important still, minority dictatorships must be defeated and prevented from rising again.
In the winter, with a successful working of the Recovery Act and with the repeal of prohibition, economy may be forgotten. Whenever a balanced budget appears on the horizon, the public is likely to lose interest in the extravagance of veteran laws. Prosperity was a contributing cause to their making; if prosperity comes back, they will be remade. Only the veterans themselves can prevent the demoralization of men who, in the war, acted from patriotic impulse. American soldiers filling the breach in a national emergency are not mercenaries before the fact. It is unfortunate that they should become so after. Only they can save themselves from this stigma. The general public will not save them. Is not this a logical job for the American Legion?
(Next month, in the final article of this series, Mr. Burlingame will describe the campaign now under way to renew the fight for veterans’ compensation when Congress meets in January)