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*Extracts from an address delivered before the Academy of Political Science in the city of New York, December 15, 1917, and reprinted by permission from the Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science for February, 1918.

By JULIA C. LATHROP
Chief of the United States Children's Bureau

THE Military and Naval Insurance Act, which became law on October 6, 1917, represents an attempt to afford a safe economic basis for all members of the armed forces of the United States and their dependents, and to assure it now. It assumes that when the nation claims the services of the citizens for military duty, it should assume the extra hazard involved -- in other words, should assume the war risk. The law requires the enlisted man to make allotment to his family in an amount not to exceed half his pay; and provides in addition an allowance from the Government of not more than $50 a month. It provides compensation in case of death or disability in an amount rising to a maximum of $100 a month, and makes provision for the reeducation of injured soldiers and sailors. All these features of the law are compulsory.

The insurance provisions are entirely voluntary, making direct appeal to thrift, foresight, independence, and individual action. The insurance is for death or total disability. Since the rates of private insurance companies for life insurance under war conditions necessarily rise to prohibitive figures, the Government offers to bear the entire war hazard and to furnish insurance calculated on the basis of the American experience tables of mortality and interest at three and one-half per cent. per annum, offered in sums of not less than $1,000 nor more than $10,000. The cost monthly to a man of twenty-one for each $1,000 is $0.65; to a man thirty-one years old the cost per month is $0.70 for $1,000, or $84 for $10,000 insurance for one year.

The law provides that the insurance must be taken out within 120 days after enlistment or after the publication of the terms, but that any person in the active service on or after the sixth day of April, 1917, who has become totally and permanently disabled or who dies within the time allowed for making application without having applied for insurance shall be deemed to have applied for such insurance, and in case of total permanent disability he shall be paid during his life monthly instalments of $25 each. In case of his death $25 per month shall be paid to his wife from the time of his death and during her widowhood, or to his children or widowed mother surviving him; but not more than 240 of such monthly instalments shall be paid. Thus the type of family mentioned above, in which there are a wife and two children, and which by allotment and allowance secures an income of $47.50 per month while the man is in the service, receives from the Government compensation in the same amount, $47.50 per month, in the event of the death of the man while in the service and in the line of duty, and the "automatic" insurance would add $25 per month, making a family income of $72.50. If the man is totally and permanently disabled under the same conditions, he and his family will receive $100 from the Government, and $25 insurance, making $125 each month the income for total permanent disability.

The $25 a month insurance payment is equivalent to what the man would have received from insurance amounting to about $4,300. If the man insures his life for a larger or smaller sum, the resulting income would be proportionate, as shown by the following table issued by the director of the Bureau of War Risk Insurance of the Treasury Department:

It is especially to be noted that the insurance offered by the Government in war time is what is known as annual renewal term insurance. At the man's direction the Government will retain from his pay the monthly premium and will continue the insurance from year to year if so directed. This insurance has no surrender value, and the premiums increase with the age of the insured. The Government, however, offers liberal provisions for changing this insurance to more desirable forms at the close of the war or within a five-year period thereafter, and the man must select some one of the plans then offered or his insurance terminates.

Insurance is not assignable nor subject to the claims of creditors of the insured or of his beneficiaries.

It was feared by some friends of the law that advantage of the insurance provision might not generally be taken. The indications thus far, however, are that the insurance Plan has commended itself to officers and men alike. Thus on December 13, sixty-eight days after the passage of the act, the War Risk Insurance Bureau had received total applications amounting to $1,963,000,000, representing over 200,000 applicants. The average amount of the policy thus far is between eight and nine thousand dollars, and officers and men insure with equal freedom.

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Plainly the income from the insurance added to the compensation allowed by law does insure a certainty of modest independence of the family. The Government thus makes good for the soldier's child the educational standard which it tacitly sets up when it extends the allowance for the child's support until the age of eighteen. This age limit implies the equivalent of a high-school education, and is one of the most noteworthy features of the bill.

One great advantage of the measure is plain. The Government promptly recognizes and assumes its responsibility for the soldier and his family, and if the operation of the law proves successful, it will certainly avoid the difficulty of the old pension system, under which pensioners reached their highest numbers forty-four years after the close of the Civil War, and pensions their highest cost forty-nine years after the war was at an end. The soldiers' orphan asylum and the soldiers' home will not reappear after this war if the spirit of this measure is carried out.

Can the Government do this work? Personally, I unhesitatingly answer yes, and it can do it better than any private organization or than any combination of public and private effort, admirable as is the result of such combined effort in Canada. Nor do I forget that the civilian relief of the Red Cross will meet many emergencies, and that States and cities and individuals will help in various ways. The reasons for placing the whole financial burden on the Government are sound.

The law's administration presents many difficulties. Now is the time to face them. The law is a great instance of much of the newer social legislation in our country, which cannot be administered by business effectiveness alone, although that is indispensable.

As the juvenile court laws, the mothers' pension law, and the workmen's compensation laws and the health regulations of our cities and States are gradually developing a new type of trained person who unites scholarly or business acquirements with practical training in applied social science, so this law must invite and utilize the best ability of the country at every strategic point in this great and novel undertaking. The law is in some respects plainly experimental; amendments will probably be needed, but that is to be expected.

If the law can be administered through the long period ahead during which it must operate in the same spirit which drafted it, and if its administrators use wisely their power to make regulations and to allow modifications solely in the interest of the beneficiaries, a great technical problem of Government administration will be solved, but beyond that a real advance in justice to the soldier and his family will be gained. (1)