11.—39.

age of the man is concerned, may be considered somewhat extreme, but the case is presented as being in other respects typical of a fairly large class. Another element in the present condition of these persons is impaired health. More than one of the medical witnesses that gave evidence before us in the various parts of the Dominion spoke of the mentality of the returned soldier as something recognizable by them as distinctive : as the mentality of a class of men who, in some cases for years, were subjected to a degree of mental and nervous strain, and life under insanitary and uncomfortable conditions, to a degree never known before. This has caused them to be restored to civil life with the marks of these experiences upon them ; they suffer and display lessened nervous control, and many of the symptoms of premature old age. Many of them have had to enter into a course of hospital treatment, and their lives for considerable periods have been alternating periods in and out of hospital. When out of hospital and subject to the ordinary strain of our industrial and economic life their disabilities place them at a conscious disadvantage, and often the result is the necessity of more hospital treatment. This after a time begins to fail in its effect; they become victims of what more than one medical witness described as " over-hospitalization," and these alternating periods begin to create a vicious circle in their lives. It should be remembered that according to a principle of selection the returned soldier should (omitting the results of war service) display better health and more stamina than those of their age who did not go to the front. The tests for military service tended to send our best men (physically) to the front, and retain, without war service, those who were not so fit. If, therefore, at the present time (considering only persons who were by age eligible for service during the period of the war), ex-service men show at least as much tendency to ill health as those who did not serve, there is a prima facie case for the submission that their tendency to ill health is due to war service. We cannot speak dogmatically on the point. None of the medical witnesses was inclined to commit himself to a definite statement of opinion, but we believe that there is some evidence that some forms of ill health are more prevalent among returned soldiers than among the equivalent units of our community who did not see war service. One point on which the medical witnesses were almost unanimous was that experience is teaching us that at too early a date the Government of this and other belligerent countries assumed that all the sickness and impaired health due to war service had manifested itself, and that any to be suffered or revealed thenceforward was not to be considered attributable to such service. The opinion was strongly expressed by practically all the medical witnesses that we have now reached a period when latent results of war service are becoming apparent in varying degrees of impaired health amongst ex-service men. Many of these men who were discharged as fit on their repatriation, and who until recently have had no particular ground for complaint in the matter of their health, are now developing and suffering from rheumatism, sciatica, lumbago, neurasthenia, respiratory diseases (asthma, bronchitis, and tuberculosis), colour-blindness, bad eyesight, deafness, heart trouble, and the after-effects of knocks and bruises. We feel justified, as a result of the evidence we have heard, in placing these appearances and developments of impaired health amongst the typical conditions of the persons concerning whom we are asked to report. We desire also to include in this category the physical and mental results of the wearing and use of artificial limbs. (b) Circumstances. In general terms we would say that the circumstances of these persons are to be described as life in that strata of our society that exists just about on but frequently below what is described as the " bread-and-butter line." At the least they suffer the economic and industrial disability of having missed some years of training and regular work, and of spending those years in conditions which tended to deteriorate all those qualities and habits of body and mind which make for usefulness and success in civil occupation. At the most they have the disqualifications just mentioned plus some degree of physical disability in the nature of lost limbs, bodies crippled by wounds or weakened by disease, or a combination of some or all these things.

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