One-Half of a Nation

The American Legion last week elected a new national commander: Seaborn P. Collins Jr., 42, a wartime transport pilot who runs a realty business in Las Cruces, N. Mex. He succeeded Arthur J. Connell of Middletown, Conn., who led the Legion's "Back-to-God" movement and who, Legionnaires said, may be the last national commander dating from World War I. The not-so-new veterans of World War II are taking over the Legion. At last week's convention they were determined to fight off criticism that veterans' benefits had gone too far.

The U.S. now has almost 21 million veterans--more than 15 million from World War II, 3,000,000 from World War I, 2,000,000 from Korea and 143,000 others. With their families, they come to nearly half the nation's population. They can collect benefits from mustering out ($300) to taps--the Government provides $150 for burial, plus flag and headstone. (If he so desires, a veteran can even bury his family in national cemeteries without charge.) Other items:

P: The Veterans Administration has paid $34 million on specially built homes for 3,500 paraplegics and $65 million on specially equipped cars for disabled vets.

P: So far, 7,800,000 vets have taken free schooling. Cost to the Government: $18.7 billion. A Korean-war vet with dependents gets $160 a month while studying.

P: Some 622,000 vets have taken job training. Cost: $1.5 billion.

P: Vets have benefited from Government guarantees on $24 billion of home, farm or business loans (and defaulted on only $27 million worth).

P: Veterans' insurance includes 7,300,000 low-premium policies.

P: Half the 2,000,000 federal employees now have veterans' preference. They get extra points at civil-service exams, are the first hired and last fired.

In Sickness & Age. By far the biggest vet programs are for health and pensions. The VA operates 170 hospitals with 117,000 beds, 4,160 doctors, 904 dentists and 13,799 nurses. Bill for the postwar hospital-building program: $750 million. Hospital and medical care cost $4 billion since 1947 and now runs $600 million a year. The American Medical Association, wary of "socialized medicine," criticizes the free care given those vets with no service-connected ailment or injury. According to the General Accounting Office, the service-connected cases cared for by the VA are outnumbered about two to one by vets ill or injured after discharge.

Each year the VA pays $2.5 billion in pensions to 3,800,000 veterans or their surviving dependents, including one Civil War survivor, ten dependents of Mexican War veterans and 226 durable veterans of the Indian wars. The War of 1812's last pensioner (Mrs. Esther Morgan of Independence, Ore. whose veteran father died in 1905) dropped off the VA's rolls in 1946. With equal longevity, the last Korean-war pensioner would be paid off in 2087 A.D. Disability payments can run up to $400 or more a month, but most of them are much smaller. Pressure is building up in the Legion for flat $100 monthly pensions to all veterans at 60.

The Cost of War. Veterans' payments double the price of war. Benefits for the Spanish-American War have cost six times as much as the war itself. World War I veterans (average age: 60) have already received as much as the war's actual cost, and the payments for World War II are mounting fast. From 1776 to 1946 the U.S. expended $30 billion for benefits. Since 1946, veterans have collected $44 billion. This year veterans' benefits are costing $4 billion.

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