to
reward our returned soldiers with the opportunity to obtain employment
and larger interest in the proprietorship of the country. The policy is
based on a sense of gratitude for heroic service, not on economic
considerations. This is the answer to those who have criticized it as
class legislation or the proposal to grant special privileges to one
element of our citizenship or as a plunge into socialism. Frankly, we
avow our purpose to do for the soldier what we would not think of doing
for anybody else and what would not be justified solely as a matter of
reclamation.

Many measures of soldier legislation have been introduced into Congress.
Only one of these has been favorably reported. This was introduced by
Representative Mondell, of Wyoming, on the first day of the present
special session, embodying the plan of reclamation and community
settlement brought forward by this department in the spring of 1918.

The measure has been much misunderstood and sometimes deliberately
misrepresented. In the first place, it was not put forward as the
complete solution of the soldier problem. It was at no time supposed or
expected that all of the 4,800,000 men and women engaged in the war with
Germany would or could take advantage of its provisions. It fortunately
happens that the vast majority quickly found their places in the
national life. Of the remainder, a very large proportion may be
classified as "city minded." They have no taste for farm life but would
be better served by vocational training and opportunities to enter upon
remunerative trades or professions. There is an element of "country
minded," and of these some 150,000 have made application for
opportunities of employment and home-making under the terms of this
bill. Largely they are men who have had agricultural experience but who
can not obtain farms of their own without very considerable cash
advances and other assistance which the Government could render. It is
for this element that the policy is designed.

It has often been said that the plan would be applied only in the West
and South. The truth is that it has been the purpose from the first to
extend it to every State where feasible projects could be found, and
that our preliminary investigations lead us to believe this will include
every State in the Union.

The wide discussion of the measure has been highly educational to the
country, and some of the criticism is of constructive character. For
example,