BACK FROM THE SERVICES

By MAJOR R. A. C. RADCLIFFE ng GREAT deal is being written and said today (and quite

he A rightly) about the problem of finding suitable work for the

of

de en and women at present serving with the Forces when they are mobilised. Much less attention is to all appearance being given :e. o the problem of their absorption into the normal life of the de ountry, perhaps because it is being assumed that if they are given job the reabsorption will happen naturally and easily without y troubles. That, I believe, is a false assumption. A great many the men and women who are in the Services today are not going find it at all easy to return to civil life and to settle down a happy relationship with those who have not been the war. They did not find it at all easy, as a matter of fact, fter the last war, but then they had to make the best of it, s no one troubled to alter his way of life to suit the ex-Servicemen. is time it must be different.

How would these men put their case if they spoke bluntly and re more articulate than most of them arc ? Something, I think, Ike this: You have lived at home while we have been far away ; you have wed with your wives and children or been near your families, while e have become almost strangers to ours ; you have slept in com- ortable beds while we have slept hard where we could ; you have ept fit and well, while our bodies are full of rheumatism and the ewers of the East ; you have gone on doing your job, and getting advancement in it, while we have lost our skill, are out of touch with our employers, and have had to start again from the beginning ; you are used to the routine of civil life, we are used to something very different ; we find everything difficult, and your conventions stupid, narrow and unintelligible ; you have lived securely, we have been facing danger and death to protect you ; you have had good money all the time and lived well and without worries ; we have had little, and our families have had less, and they have grown old with the worries and the strain of their efforts to keep going in our absence. Finally, you have been able to save and build up a reserve to keep your homes going, while we have run into debt, and will have to spend all our war bonus and more in getting straight and starting a home again.

Now, of course, all these accusations are not true, and a civilian lacking imagination and with little first-hand knowledge of Service ife might well reply to them as follows: Such statements leave completely out of account all the hardships that we have been enduring in this country, while the Service man has been having a wonderful open-air, healthy life of adventure and travel, free from all the home and financial worries we have had. Many of these men have, in fact, seen very little actual fighting—not one in five, so they say, ever goes into action—and some have never even left this country. We have, after all, been through pretty bad air-raids, and a good many nights have been spent, not in comfortable beds at all, but in air-raid shelters, or on fire-watch or Home Guard duty. Our houses have been bombed, our children evacuated, and income-tax on wages and E.P.T. have made anything like saving almost impossible. And have not we, too, lost our businesses and had to start again? Moreover, it is not entirely our fault that we are where we are. We have done our bit in the best way we could just as the soldier has.

But does this kind of argument help? I doubt it. If we give those answers, and reply to accusations with counter-accusations, We shall only succeed in adding to existing bitterness initead of

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trying to create friendship and understanding. And, if we aro really honest with ourselves, there is a lot of truth in those accusa- tions from the point of view of the persons returning to civil life ; it is th-y, not we, who have got to make a second tremendous readjustment in their lives, and they need all the help and sympathy and understanding that we can give them in that task.

The first thing to do is to welcome them to our councils. In industry, in Parliament, in local government and in the Civil Service these people from another world must be given places fitting to their experience and their age ; and at all costs we must avoid making the mistakes of the last war, when those who had served were given the bottom places everywhere and driven into bitterness and disillusion—the harvest of which we are still reaping in the country.

They have a great contribution to make—we must see that they are given every chance to make it. But practical steps, involving much unselfishness, will be required to achieve this, and I suggest that the following practical steps could be taken now: t. Political parties should ask a number of M.P.s to stand down at the end of the war in favour of Service M.P.s.

2. Local councils should act in the same way.

3. The Civil Service, Colonial Service, &c., should devise special short courses for those who have missed promotion through absence, and should then give them accelerated promotion.

4. Industrial and other firms should ask directors and men near the age of retirement to retire in favour of ex-Servicemen, and make openings for ex-Servicemen in all ranks and branches of their businesses.

5. The professions—medicine, bar, &c.—should devise ways and means of pushing on ex-Servicemen.

6. Associations like Rotary, voluntary organisations like the Boy Scouts, and Church Councils should invite ex-Servicemen to be on their committees at once, and not wait for someone to die or retire.

One could add a hundred other suggestions, but it is unnecessary, as the line of thought is 'clear. What we want is to absorb fully into the life of the nation at once all those who have had the experience of military service in this war, and not to let that priceless revitalising experience run in a separate bitter current giving nothing to the common stream of our national life—except perhaps in the lowest reaches. It is a choice between fusion and confusion. If we choose the former, we shall, I believe, stand a real chance of winning some of the things for which most people are fighting.

The right choice will mean much sacrifice and unselfishness on the part of many of those who have stayed at home, and who will very probably feel when the war ends that they have already done their full share of giving up. Whether it is made or not will there- fore depend, I think, a great deal on whether the absolute necessity for it is clearly realised, but far more on whether we have leaders with the courage to continue to demand sacrifices from us for the common good when the war is over. It will be perhaps the greatest and most critical test of democratic leadership that this country has ever faced.