SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' INSURANCE. 



By SAMUEL McCUNE LINDSAY, Ph.D., LL.D. 



(Read April 20, 1918.) 



Among all the marvelous applications of science to warfare 

 which the great European war has produced, — the gas shell, the 

 75-centimeter gun, the submarine, the Liberty motor, etc, — there 

 is nothing more significant than the attempt to apply the principles 

 of mutuality and insurance to lighten the burdens of war for our 

 fighting men and their families and dependents. As soon as 

 America entered the European war and undertook to do its part, we 

 realized that for the protection of those who must go to the front 

 the existing pension legislation and the old six months gratuity act 

 were as much out of date as the flint-lock musket. Within the first 

 six months after the United States declared war on Germany, Con- 

 ress worked out and enacted the War Risk Insurance act, which in 

 another six months, or at the end of the first year of our participa- 

 tion in the war, has made the United States Government the greatest 

 life and causalty insurance company in the world. At the close of 

 business yesterday (April 19, 1918) in the matter of insurance 

 liability alone, the War Risk Bureau had accepted 1,785,173 applica- 

 tions for insurance on the lives of soldiers and sailors, in amounts of 

 not less than $1,000 nor more than $10,000 upon any one such 

 life, aggregating $14,542,471,500.^ This is more outstanding life 

 insurance for the United States Government than the combined out- 

 standing life insurance carried by the twenty largest companies in 

 America, and it is nearly two and one half times the total amount 

 of hfe insurance written during the previous year by all of the 

 companies in the United States. Probably at least 95 per cent, of 

 all the fighting men of the army and navy who are eligible to take 

 this insurance have been covered and the average amount per man 

 on x^pril 19 was $8,146. The average day's business of this in- 



1 For corresponding figures revised to Aug. 20, see below, p. 647. 



632 



