THE H.B. TRIBUNE. MONDAY, OCT. 23, 1916. RE-EDUCATING THE MAIMED.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume VI, Issue 263, 23 October 1916, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. MONDAY, OCT. 23, 1916. RE-EDUCATING THE MAIMED.

Mr, Massey has told the people of the Old Country that New Zealand must defer the consideration of any fresh immigration scheme until she has satisfactorily disposed of i Ito problem of reabsorbing into civilian life the large body of men who have been abstracted from it to assist the .Motherland in fulfilling her part in the Great War. The last number of tlie “Round Table,” just to hand, has a most excellent article on one feature of this problem on which we have more than once touched in this column —the fitting of the maimed to useful industrial purposes. The “Round Table” writer opens by saying that “a war medal and the workhouse have too often been the reward of the men disabled in former wars, and, unless the problem is tackled boldly and at once, there is every prospect that this war will repeat the scandal of the past on a colossal scale.” What is especially emphasised is the urgent need for immediate action, the setting to work at once to inspire a spirit of independence by making independence physically possible, for the precess of deterioration is appallingly rapid. “All who have experience in dealing with discharged soldiers,” it is said, “agrsa that m a majority of cases a man who temains unemployed' for three months after his discharge is past praying l ir, and what is true of the discharged r-o’dier in general applies with special force to the disabled man. It is net primarily a question of pension. The most liberal scale of pensions ever suggested will not check this waste of manhood, which, in its ultimate effect on the community, entails a loss difficult to over-estimate. ’ The man who has been so disabled that he cannot follow his old vocation in life is only too prone to “feel himself a marked man, a member of an unfortunate class, cut off from the normal life of his fellows.” But a brief period of such self-contempla-tion is in many cases quite sufficient to breed in a man, first, a morbid despondency, and later on an all too easy conviction that he is fairly entitled to relapse into life-long idleness. For those who have suffered such injuries as to make them wholly and hopelessly incapable of assisting in any way to their own support, the utmost that is possible must be done to alleviate the sad condition to which a sense of duty has brought them. But. both for the individual himself and for the community, it is of vital importance that whatever of useful energy remains stored up in either body or mind should be directed into some useful channel. Every disabled soldier is entitled to expect that the community should bestir itself in order to re-equip him for such an employment as he is left capable of taking up. “The truest philanthrophy is to enable a man to do without charity, and to merely pension a man instead of training him to earn the means ot livelihood is a counsel of despair. This co-operation between the community and the disabled citizen should begin from the first moment the man is able to leave his bed. Half the buttle would be won by making the men who can never return to active service feel at once that the same practical interest is taken in training them for a new start in civilian life as in training them originally for the wholly unfamiliar occupation of war.” We know that those in authority have not been altogether negligent in this matter, but we doubt very inner, whether their endeavours have been so well organised and systematised as to achieve anything like the maximum result. The mere throwing open

of local technical schools, and the like, is not going to capture any very large proportion of those whose gradually crystallising resignation to a. life of comparative helplessness deadens the earlier impulses to selfpreservation natural to the ven great majority. Not cue man in very many wants to loaf through life, bm the habit once, even involuntarily acquired is difficult to shed, so that the sure way to success is to take the subject in hand at the earliest possible moment and in a spirit co cheerful encouragement. France ha: been quick to recognise vyhat is boti. a national duty and a national profit, and has established ‘‘schools” where the “re-education” of maimed met is undertaken in order to fit then; for useful citizenship. These school; are modelled on the training schoo at Charleroi, which was founded, ere ever the. war began, to deal with mei disabled by industrial accidents. They aim at developing any latent capacities of their pupils, and start on" the assumption that “a man whose incapacity prevents him from returning to his old occupation eno and should be taught a new one.” This, however, cannot be done by some desultory 7 sort of attempt to adapt existing facilities to the purpose. What is wanted is some defi nite scheme, directed specifically and solelv to the training of grown men whom fate has compelled to begin again practically from the beginning. It is not fair to them to ask them to take their place beside, those much their juniors, who are going through the process for the first time. Adults are naturally sensitive to comparison of their efforts with those of a younger generation, and feel keenl;. the ridicule in which youth is apt to indulge at the mistakes of its seniors. What is vranted, if we are to sue ceed in re-equippin" these partly incapacitated men, are iustitutions de; voted exclusively to themselves, ano. they have every good right to expect: that these should be provided for them.