the 4,250,000 men in the military or naval service
now holding voluntary government insurance will be permitted within five
years after peace is declared to convert it without further medical
examination into ordinary life, twenty-pay life, endowment maturing at
the age of sixty-two, or other prescribed forms of insurance.

This insurance will be arranged by the government, not by private
companies, and the cost is expected to be at least one-fourth less than
similar forms offered by private agencies. The low cost will result from
the fact that the government will pay all overhead administration
expenses, which, for private companies, amount to about seventeen per
cent of premium receipts; will save the usual solicitation fees and, in
addition, bear the risk resulting from the wounding or weakening of men
while in the service. Private companies would not write insurance on
many wounded men, or their rates would be unusually high.

The government will arrange to collect premiums monthly, if men wish to
pay that way, or for longer periods in advance. This may be done through
post-offices. The minimum amount of insurance to be issued probably will
be $1,000, and the maximum $10,000, with any amount between those sums
in multiple of $500. There will be provision for payments in case of
disability as well as death, according to the tentative plan.

Thus will be created out of the government's emergency war insurance
bureau the greatest life insurance institution in the world for peace
times, with more policyholders and greater aggregate risks than a half
dozen of the world's biggest private companies combined. Out of the
experience gained may eventually develop expansion of government
insurance to old age, industrial and other forms of insurance, in the
opinion of officials who have studied the subject.

Regulations for reinsuring returning soldiers and sailors are being
framed by an advisory board to the military and naval section of the war
risk bureau, consisting of Arthur Hunter, actuary of the New York Life
Insurance Company; W. A. Fraser, Omaha, of the Woodmen of the World, and
F. Robertson Jones, of the Workmen's Compensation Publicity Bureau, New
York.

Plans also are under consideration for allowing beneficiaries of men who
have died or been killed in the service to choose between taking monthly
payments over a period of twenty years or to commute these payments in a
lump sum.

CHAPTER LV

AMERICA'S POSI