LINDSAY— SOLDIERS' AND SAILORS' INSURANCE. 647 



Reference has already been made to the remarkable response 

 made by the military and naval forces to the offer of this voluntary 

 insurance. The actual figures (corrected to August 20, 1918) show 

 that the Bureau of War Risk Insurance has received and accepted 

 in the first ten months of its operation, 3,319,593 applications for 

 twenty-eight and a half billions of dollars of insurance, which aver- 

 aged $8,602 per application. As in some instances more than one 

 application was made on behalf of an enlisted man, the total num- 

 ber of applications on August 20, which is probably greater than 

 the total number of men in the miltary and naval forces on that date, 

 does not represent the exact number of persons insured, and the 

 average amount of insurance taken per person is therefore greater 

 than $8,602. 



This huge government insurance business represents more out- 

 standing insurance in the first year of its history than that of any 

 other insurance organization in the world and more than the total 

 life insurance written during the past year by the twenty largest 

 companies in the United States. A single day's business, for 

 example, that of August 20, amounts to twenty-seven thousand ap- 

 plications for a total of over two hundred sixty-seven million dollars, 

 or more than the total outstanding business of many a good-sized 

 private insurance company. 



Voluntary insurance supplied by the government at cost is a 

 service of the greatest social significance. Combined with the 

 benefits of family allowances and of compensation for death and 

 disability, it provides in a scientific, just and equitable way for the 

 fulfillment of a great national obligation which is intended to safe- 

 guard the morale of our Army and Navy and of those families of 

 the nation which are making the greatest sacrifices for the success- 

 ful prosecution of the war. The War Risk Insurance Act in its 

 entirety is for the American people a new departure of the greatest 

 significance as an expression of a new sense of social solidarity and 

 unity of national purpose. Other nations have experimented for 



child or children of the insured, or if there is no child surviving, then the 

 mother, or if there is no mother surviving, then the father, if and while they 

 survive the insured ; and this provision was made retro-active and the Bureau 

 of War Risk Insurance directed to revise all its awards of automatic insur- 

 ance on July I, 1918, in accordance with these amended terms. 



