EDITORIAL. 
147 
the assistance of those who are ambitious to improve the pro¬ 
fession, and to carry on warfare against those very forces 
which oppose our progress. Yet these are the very men who 
must be depended upon to carry forward movements for the good 
of the whole profession as they come along, and win battles 
against the opposers of professional advance. The busiest prac¬ 
titioners, by scores, hundreds, nay, thousands, are just the men 
who are ready for the thick of the fight; they are ready to take 
up the cudgels and strike at opposition to the profession to which 
they have given their heart and their hand. Undeniably, the 
question of the present moment which is most agitating the minds 
of veterinarians throughout the whole nation, and which has 
mightily stirred up the many thousands of our members in all 
the states, so that all veterinary associations, municipal, state and 
national, are tingling with interest in it, is that of the passag*e of 
a law by Congress for the relief of veterinarians in the United 
States army. They are our colleagues and brother practitioners, 
whose position for the prolonged agony of forty-nine long years 
has been one which sinks them in humiliation and is a disgrace 
to us for permitting it. Because the profession is comprised so 
largely of private practitioners, the fate of the bill for the allevia¬ 
tion of this condition, known in the House of Representatives as 
H .R. 16843, an d i n the Senate as the Penrose Bill, S. 5792, is in 
large measure in their hands. 
Private practitioners of America, what are you going to do 
about it? By the tyranny of the War Department and the neg¬ 
ligence of Congress your brother practitioners in the army have 
been, as we said in an editorial in the April Review, kept down 
in a position of servility. This should be remedied now and for¬ 
ever by the passage of the bill. A New York philosopher has re¬ 
cently said: “ Every good thing has been condemned in its day 
and generation. Every innovation has to fight for its life. Error 
once set in motion continues indefinitely unless blocked by a 
stronger force and old methods of thinking and doing will always 
remain unless someone invents a new and better way and then 
lives and dies for it. And the reason men oppose progress is not 
