They were defrauding the public with sheer, undisguised robbery, and
the government did nothing to check them. England, they thought, was
rotten all through.
Who cared for the men who had risked their lives and bore on their
bodies the scars of war? The pensions doled out to blinded soldiers
would not keep them alive. The consumptives, the gassed, the
paralyzed, were forgotten in institutions where they lay hidden from
the public eye. Before the war had been over six months "our heroes,"
"our brave boys in the trenches" were without preference in the
struggle for existence.
Employers of labor gave them no special consideration. In many offices
they were told bluntly (as I know) that they had "wasted" three or
four years in the army and could not be of the same value as boys just
out of school. The officer class was hardest hit in that way. They had
gone straight from the public schools and universities to the army.
They had been lieutenants, captains, and majors in the air force, or
infantry battalions, or tanks, or trench-mortars, and they had drawn
good pay, which was their pocket-money.
Pages:
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961