VILLAGE SETTLEMENTS FOR DISABLED OFFICERS AND MEN.
(To THE Enrol or THE SPECTATOR."1 • have been requested by the Commit of the Village Settle- silents scheme for restoring and training those officers and men who have been discharged as disabled from our fighting ranks te bring to your notice the appeal that is made on its behalf in the full hope that you may allow your great influence to be exerted in its favour. The scheme in based upon self-help. the only real method of true restoration. It encourages what the Spectator has always advocated—via., (Lo opportunity for self-support in a natural environment. It is based upon -a most.successfal instance of a Belgian scheme worked in France, and it is the only one of its kind in this country, therefore there can be no overlapping .nd diffusion of effort. It has the warm support of the War Office and several Government Departments, and it has secured the promise of considerable financial suppart when a beginning has been made. The Council desires to make its aims known as-widely and sympathetically as may bo possible; it therefore craves the favourable notice and help of the editor of the Spectator, whose 'recommendation may decide its fate. The aims, objects, and general character and policy of the scheme are fully set out in lite printed appeal herewith enclosed.-1 am, Sir, &c.,
Roam Aamsraosa-Josss, M.D., Major R.A.M.C. 9 Bramkain Gardens, S.IV.
[We regret that we cannot find space for the long printed _state- ment of the scheme, but the idea is an admirable one. The Honorary Secretary is Miss Hilda Fox, 38 Devonshire Piece, W.I. The promoters demise to found for .disabled soldiers and sailors "small ,self-supplying village communities where local industries and handicrafts shall be pursued on sound and Met lines." In our view,-every man who is, isabled in the war must be a .charge upon the nation till he is reetored to his greatest possible capacity for supporting himseLf. -No method of restora- tion seems more promising than that of making a man feel hie independence in the acts of raising for himself a home and gratify- ing an ambition to " got on." This may he done in many ways upon the land; it can always be done more easily in the country than in the towns. A man who is kept too long or too rigidly in leading-strings, even though every hind of medical skill and com- fort be expended upon him, is at some moral disadvantage in his attempt to become again really self-supporting.—ED. Spectator.]
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