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Finally, there are open to war cripples a very large number of positions in government service. The imperial government has promised that all former employees of the railways, postoffice, and civil service will be re-employed, if not in their old capacity, in a kindred position. These men are to be paid without consideration of their pensions. The postoffice department has decided to give all future agencies and sub-agencies in the rural districts to war cripples, provided they are fit for the positions and want to settle on the land. Many city governments make efforts to take in cripples. There are reserved for cripples a number of employments under the war department, which through its recently created welfare department attempts also to develop placement activity wherever there is no very active local care committee, publishing twice a week a journal which lists positions open for war cripples.

Both in Austria and in Hungary, re-education is obligatory and entirely controlled by the government. The respective functions of the military and the civil authorities, with regard to the care of the disabled, have been delimited as follows. The military authorities provide the wounded with the first medical assistance, bear the cost of manufacturing and repairing artificial limbs as long as the patient stays in military service, meet the cost of the treatment in non-military institutions, keep the wounded under control until recovery of earning capacity or until discharged as an invalid. After-treatment and vocational re-education are controlled jointly by the military and civil authorities. Placement is entirely under civilian auspices.

The civilian part of the work is controlled by the Ministry of the Interior. However, in view of the great variety of linguistic and economic conditions in the empire, the Ministry has entrusted the care of invalids to the several provincial governments. In the capital of each province a provincial commission was created, for the purpose, among other things, of providing medical care and vocational re-education for war invalids of the province, and of creating the necessary machinery for placement, to administer which an official employment bureau has been created at every provincial capital.

The largest Austrian institution for the care of war invalids is the so-called Reserve Hospital No. 11, in Vienna. It comprises both an orthopedic hospital and training school. The hospital, which is excellently equipped, receives wounded soldiers whose wounds have been completely healed, and gives them reconstructive treatment. At the same time those who require prosthetic appliances are trained in using them.

After having completed the preliminary orthopedic treatment, every patient is assigned to a workshop. The workshops were at first established in a public school. But later a garden city was created, consisting of forty-two barracks, with a hundred men in each. The shops are now distributed among these barracks.

Altogether about thirty trades are taught, mostly small handicrafts, such as can be carried on in small rural localities. The most important subjects of instruction are the following: wood work (cabinet-making, turning, carpentry), metal work (locksmithing, blacksmithing, brazing, electrical work), bookbinding, basket-making, painting, masonry, plastering, leather work (harness-making, purse-making, orthopedic appliances) , tailoring, and shoe-making. In addition to the manual trades, there are courses in bookkeeping, typewriting, arithmetic, and drawing. A course in agriculture is likewise given. There has been put at the disposition of the hospital a private estate, on which practical farm training in agriculture is carried on under the direction of a physician and of a one-armed teacher.

The first object of the re-education is always to return the man to his former trade, and, according to report, this result is attained in all but one case in twenty. Whenever the man can satisfactorily be restored to his former occupation, or when he has to be adapted to some less arduous work in the same line, his re-education is completed in the hospital school. But in the case of men being trained for a more skilled position in their own trade, or being taught an entirely new vocation -- especially the young soldiers who have never before had any industrial training -- the courses given in the hospital schools are purely preparatory. Their purpose is to complete the functional restoration of the man, to find for him the most suitable occupation, and to accustom him to the use of his prosthesis. The specialization in skilled trades is left to other institutions, mainly to the regular vocational schools, which, through the cooperation of the Ministry of Public Works and of the various trade associations, offer special facilities for the training of men graduated from the hospital schools.

The schools for invalids are under military control, but their administration is jointly civilian and military. Besides the "medical director," who is a member of the medical corps, there is a "technical director," appointed by the Ministry of Public Works. These two officials act cooperatively as vocational advisers.