Life — March 2, 1922 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MARCH 2, 1922 “While there is Life there’s Hope” Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY London Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs, London, E. C. Ow very gratifying it would be if the Bonus question could be settled on its merits. At this writing it is being discussed. It has not been much discussed before. Pub- lic opinion has not taken shape about it, for, in truth, there has been very little appeal to public opinion. The job has been done, as far as it has gone, by political organization. It occurred to some enterprising per- sons that the discharged soldiers ought to be organized, and they were organ- ized. No doubt, that was inevitable. The organization at the start was de- clared to be non-political, but an organi- zation does not last and keep its strength unless it has something definite to go after; unless, indeed, it promises to benefit in some way its members. The plan for the Bonus, euphemistically known as “adjusted compensation,” was produced to strengthen the Legion and increase its membership. The word was passed around: “Join the Legion and there will be something coming to you.” So took form the plan for the Bonus. Now the enlisted men who went to the war were not the only Americans who helped to win it, but they were the visible fighting force through which and behind which every kind of power in this country—man power, woman power, machine power, noise power, money power—worked and pressed. In everyone who favored our getting into the war, the sense of obligation to the service men was and is extremely strong. To treat them generously is an all but universal desire. That is one reason why, though the movement for the Bonus has been organized and 598 Madison Avenue, New York pressed, sentiment against it has been vague and general. Organization, like every other pow- erful thing, is dangerous. It is a means by which an active few can use the minds of the preoccupied many. It looks so bad in certain lights that one may say—Why the Ten Command- ments and not one of them forbidding organization? The tendency of organi- zation is to become self-seeking. Self- preservation becomes its first law, like that of any animal. Organize religion and religion tends to leak away, and the interest of the organization to sup- plant it. Organize politics, and prin- ciples tend to yield to party interests. Organize patriots and patriotism pres- ently yields place to efforts after loaves and fishes. Nevertheless, there has to be organization, and without it our modern world apparently would get nowhere. One way to beat it is to organize against it. Another way is to bring its desires and purposes before the great court of public opinion to pass judgment on it. ‘HIS last is now being done for the Bonus. The demand for it repre- sents the organizers and chieftains of the American Legion. How much popular support it has in-the rank and file of the Legion, nobody knows. Of course, human nature being what it is, and money so useful, a very large pro- portion of the service men will accept any money that is offered them, the more so because a good many of them need money; but still, to hundreds of thousands of them, the position they have been put into by the Bonus advo- cates must be very distasteful, In that great group of men who went to the war, there should be, and doubtless is, the very best material in the coun the men on whom the country leans for leadership and security, and will so lean during the next thirty years. To have such men exhibited as part of a group which goes to Congress demand- ing an unreasonable moncy benefit with threats of political retribution if it is not granted them is very bad invleed. NE would rather shoulder a new burden of debt than have such men think that the country docs not care for them, nor appreciate what they did. What they helped to accomplish in the winning of the war was of a value not to be measured in any ma- terial thing—something not related to money and as impossible to pay for as salvation itself. There or therealouts hides the real trouble about the [onus bill. It is not right, and it begins to seem possible that it will be beaten. Its organized promoters are up against the taxpayers, and the taxpayers, though not exactly organized, are a delinite and visible group of citizens who have votes and influence, and use them. The taxpayers are paying for the war. and it keeps them pretty busy. If they do not think the Bonus is justly due, and find their own burdens are to be seri- ously increased by it, they will furnish an opposition or a retribution worth reckoning with. Congress has heen not so much a court in this matter as a kind of push ball. The organizers of the Legion have been pushing it one way for all they are worth, and for a good while there has been no one visible pushing against them, except Secretary Mellon, But with the tax- comicbooks.com