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The trade training is given while the men are still in the military hospital, beginning, in fact, as soon as they are able to be out of bed. The workshops are maintained by the local care committees; they can be located either in the hospital, or at an outside point to which the men go every day. The first plan is followed by but a few of the larger institutions; in most instances there are no workshops maintained at the hospitals. The local care committee may utilize the local trade schools. There are excellent facilities for this, since every town has at least one trade school. Some representative of the educational authorities generally serves on the local care committee and the schools are eager, in any case, to offer free instruction. German magazines are full of advertisements of free courses for war cripples, offered by schools of the most varying kind, public and private, from agricultural and commercial schools to professional schools and universities. On the other hand, in a large town, with a number of hospitals, the committee may create a school of its own. Thus, in Diisseldorf, for instance, where there are fifty hospitals, the committee has taken possession of a school building equipped with shops and tools and given twenty courses open to men from all the hospitals.

It is planned that none of the courses shall take more than six months, the maximum time for hospital care. These short courses are intended for men of experience who need further practice in their old trade or in an allied one. If a man needs further training after this short course, he becomes the charge of the local care committee, which supports him while he attends a technical school or pays the premium for apprenticing him to a master workman.

A special effort is being made to return to the land all who have any connection with it, such as farmers, farm laborers, and even hand-workers of country birth. All the hospitals which have any land give courses in farming and gardening for their patients. It is estimated that there are several hundred such hospital farms, small or large, operated by the wounded. In addition to this, there are definite summer farm courses at agricultural schools and universities, which are free to cripples. There are in the empire ten regular agricultural schools for war cripples.

Since the one-armed man has one of the gravest handicaps, special arrangements have been made in several places for his training. The purpose of these courses for the one-armed is to accustom the soldier to exercise the stump and the remaining member, performing the daily duties such as eating, washing, dressing, tying knots, using simple tools, and the like. This is a preliminary to specialized trade training, and the process is said usually to require about six weeks.

An essential feature of the course is left-handed writing for those who have lost the right arm, not only for men in preparation for clerical work but for others as well. This training banishes to a marked degree the feeling of helplessness and likewise gives the hand greater flexibility and skill. German teachers have made a scientific study of this question and state that left-handed writing can be made as legible and characteristic as right-handed. Samples of left-handed writing from Nurnberg show excellent script after from twelve to twenty lessons.

Left-handed drawing, designing, and modeling are often added subjects of instruction. Men with clerical experience are taught to use the typewriter, sometimes using the stump, sometimes a special prosthesis, and sometimes with a shift key worked with the knee.

All the schools for one-armed put great emphasis on physical training. In the school at Heidelberg, under a regular gymnasium instructor, the men do almost all the athletic feats possible to two-armed men.

There is no uniform machinery for the placement of war cripples. The care committees, while interviewing the man in the hospital, also get in touch with his former employer. Sometimes a position is thus secured even before the man has started his training, and the latter is then adapted to the requirements of that particular position. But it is not always possible to place a man with his old employer. Some of the larger care committees run employment bureaus of their own. Others turn over to some other agency the man who cannot be taken back to his old position -- usually to the regular employment bureaus. Germany has a system of public employment bureaus supported by the municipalities. The bureaus in each state or province are united under a state or provincial directorate, and the directorates in an imperial federation. Some of these had, before the war, special divisions for the handicapped, and others have established them since the outbreak of hostilities. Employers' and workmen's associations are of considerable assistance in the placement of war cripples, especially the Federation of German Employers' Associations, which has been recently formed for this particular purpose, and the many master guilds of handworkers. There are also a number of agencies due to charitable or private initiative.