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The school in connection with the Maximilian Hospital at Petrograd offers a considerable range of courses, among them the following: manufacture of orthopedic apparatus, locksmithing, shoemaking, cabinet-making, and tailoring.

At Nurnberg, Germany, the crippled soldier learns to become a blacksmith, locksmith, maker of orthopedic apparatus, machinist, cobbler, tailor, cabinet-maker, saddler, upholsterer, weaver, paint-brush maker (a strong local industry), printer, or book-binder. There is also instruction in industrial design as applied in varied fields. At the Dusseldorf school instruction is given in machine tool work, mechanical drafting, building trades, telegraphy, and commercial and civil service subjects.

In England, the workshops of the Incorporated Soldiers and Sailors Help Society provide training in the following trades: carpentry and cabinet-making, printing, polishing, carving and gilding, picture framing, toy-making, basket-making, metal work, building and construction, decorating, and electrical fitting. The principal subjects at Roehampton and Brighton (Queen Mary's Convalescent Auxiliary Hospitals) are inside electrical wiring, motor driving and repairs, and woodworking, which includes bench and lathe practice. At Cliveden and at other points in Britain agricultural training is available.

In the Canadian schools, under the auspices of the Military Hospitals Commission, the leading trades are motor mechanics, machine-tool work, carpentry and woodturning, inside electrical wiring, telegraphy, cobbling, operation of agricultural tractors, general farming, and poultry raising. Instruction is also provided in bookkeeping, general office work, and civil service subjects.

The section of the country in which a man lives also has a bearing on the choice of a trade in which he is to receive instruction. Thus, a Canadian living in Montreal may be trained as a machinist; the same man, if a resident of a far western province, would better be given instruction in the operation of motor tractors for agricultural work.

It is axiomatic that a man should be given his course of training in a locality near home. Here he will not feel so strange, friends will not be far away, and the educational authorities will be in closer touch with the local industrial requirements and employment conditions.

III

It is the general consensus of experience that the decision by the man to undertake a course of training must be a voluntary one. Of course, he may be retained in the military organization and detailed to trade classes in the same way as he is detailed to guard duty, but this would not make for successful results. The unwilling and rebellious pupil learns but little; the earnest and ambitious one makes rapid progress. The man must be persuaded, therefore, to take up instruction; the future advantages of being a trained workman in some skilled trade should be pointed out, and the practical arrangements to be made for him during the course of instruction carefully explained. There is no royal road to success in this effort, but after gaining the soldier's friendship and confidence, a patient persistence will win the battle. If a competent visitor has been in touch with the man's family during his absence at the front, the members of the home circle can be easily convinced of the wisdom of his re-education; this will make all the simpler persuasion of the man himself.

A great aid in helping a soldier to decide about his future is acquaintance with the records of other men with similar physical handicaps who have made good men who have been trained and who are now holding jobs at attractive wages. In addition, such practical results lend plausibility to the expectations in prospect which are being held out to him. A difficulty, however, is found in the abnormal premium on industrial labor in war time. Even a disabled man may be able to go out and earn seven dollars a day in a munitions factory. This constitutes a very potent present counter-attraction to representations of moderate but permanent employment after a course of training. If he makes the opportunist choice he will, upon the return of employment conditions to normal, be reduced to the status of a casual laborer, perilously near the verge of mendicancy. No pains should be spared to avert this eventuality.

Care should be taken, however, that representations to the man, while encouraging, should in the main be accurate. Workers with crippled soldiers should not be misled by reports of extraordinary success in isolated cases. The men will, sooner or later, learn the truth, which will thus tend to discredit the veracity of the vocational officials.

In deciding which of the available courses an individual disabled soldier should pursue, the first effort should be to fit him for an occupation related as closely as possible to his former job. His past experience far from being discarded should be built upon. A competent journeyman bricklayer who has lost an arm may be prepared by a suitable course in architectural drafting and the interpretation of plans, to take a position as construction foreman of a bricklaying gang. It were idle to give such a man a course in telegraphy. But a train hand who has been all his life familiar with railroad work may most wisely be trained as a telegraphic operator, with a little commercial instruction on the side. This man will then be fitted to obtain employment as station agent at some minor point on the road. There is an additional advantage in instances such as the two mentioned in that the former employer will be willing to engage again a man with whose record and character he is familiar once there is assured the competence of the ex-soldier in his new capacity.