far as the financial program of the President is concerned, there is no objection to making a favorable report on this bill. The bill H. R. 2388 is similar in language to the bill H. R. 11688 introduced in the Seventieth Congress.

In view of the foregoing, the Navy Department recommends that the bill H. R. 2388 be enacted.

Sincerely yours,

C. F. ADAMS, Secretary of the Navy.

O

AMENDING SECTION 601 OF SUBCHAPTER 3 OF THE CODE OF LAWS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

MARCH 10, 1930.-Referred to the House Calendar and ordered to be printed

Mr. MCLEOD, from the Committee on the District of Columbia, submitted the following

REPORT

[To accompany H. R. 3144]

The Committee on the District of Columbia, to whom was referred the bill (H. R. 3144) to amend sections 599, 600, and 601 of subchapter 3 of the Code of Laws for the District of Columbia, having considered the same, report it back to the House with the following amendments and recommend that the bill do pass:

Strike out in the title of the bill the letter "s" on the word "sections".

Strike out in the title of the bill the figure "599" and the comma thereafter, and on the same line the figure "600", the comma thereafter, and the word "and" before the figure "601", so that the title will read:

To amend section 601 of subchapter 3 of the Code of Laws for the District of Columbia.

Strike out on line 3, after the enacting clause, the letter "s" on the word "sections", the figure "599" and the comma thereafter, the figure "600" and the comma thereafter, and the word "and" before the figure "601".

Strike out in line 4, after the word "same", the word "are" and insert in lieu thereof the word "is".

Strike out sections 599 and 600 of the bill.

This leaves only one section, 601, in the bill, same being identical with existing law with the exception of the words "unless a less number be specified as a quorum in the by-laws." This modifies the provision designating a majority of the trustees as a quorum for the transaction of business and permits the organization to specify in its by-laws the number it desires to constitute a quorum.

Your committee believes that this amendment will facilitate the business of educational, charitable, religious, and similar organizations.

In conformity with paragraph 2a of Rule XIII of the House of Representatives, the change in existing law is herein specifically set forth as follows:

SEC. 601. Trustees. Such incorporated society may elect its trustees, directors, or managers * * * and a majority of whom shall be a quorum for the transaction of business unless a less number be specified as a quorum in the by-laws.

О

AMEND WORLD WAR VETERANS' ACT, 1924

MARCH 10, 1930.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed

Mr. Luce, from the Committee on World War Veterans' Legislation, submitted the following

REPORT

[To accompany H. R. 10381]

The Committee on World War Veterans' Legislation, to which was referred the bill (H. R. 10381) to amend the World War veterans' act, 1924, as amended, having had the same under consideration, report it back to the House with the recommendation that the bill do pass.

In general this bill conforms to the legislative program of the American Legion, which as far as it went was indorsed by other organizations of veterans. It grants important additional benefits, and it cures sundry administrative defects that experience has disclosed.

Various proposals of wide range looking to the further relief of veterans of the World War have been submitted to your committee. The most important of them have sprung from the difficulty in connecting with service many cases thought to be of service origin or aggravation, but incapable of meeting existing requirements, especially those calling for medical proof that disability had appeared prior to the date specified by the law. Immediately after the war an early date was set, inasmuch as it was thought that a brief time would suffice to disclose injurious effects of service. In 1924 the time limit for connecting with service five specified types of disease was extended to January 1, 1925, connection to be presumed if the disease had appeared in the interval. All other disease must still have manifested itself before July 2, 1921, and as time passed the proof of this became more and more difficult.

It developed that in many cases service connection could not be established because of lack of medical record at the time of treatment. It seemed altogether probable that this was often not the

fault of the sufferer, but was due to the inexact recording inevitable under war conditions, to loss of records, or to some other excusable cause. Your committee became convinced that in these and some other particulars the technical requirements in the matter of proof have been too strict, and that reasonable evidence of any sort should suffice.

Believing the time had come to go still further in removing technical obstacles and wiping out discriminations, your committee decided to recommend important modification of section 200 of the World War veterans' act-the section dealing with service connection of disabilities incurred or aggravated in the course of military service. As amended this section will extend the benefits of compensation to every disability incurred between the date of the veteran's entrance into the military service and January 1, 1925, if within that time a 10 per cent degree of disability was manifested, and unless there is in the record clear and convincing evidence that the condition is due directly to some intervening cause not in any way associated with military life.

The justification for this is to be found in the disclosure by the testimony that there exists discrimination in favor of sufferers from certain specific diseases, notably tuberculosis and ailments of the nervous system, whereas many other veterans just as disabled or even worse off, whose service records bear witness to honorable and extensive exposure to the hardships of warfare, have been unable to obtain any of the benefits granted by the Government. To put an end to this discrimination may be costly, but it will be just.

As far as the principle of compensation for bodily harm resulting from war service is concerned, this will clean up practically all difficulties and differences of opinion as to disease and injury shown to have been suffered before January 1, 1925, and will meet the great bulk of so-called border-line cases that have seriously disturbed Members of Congress and the public at large.

There remained the problem of disease developing or injury sustained after January 1, 1925. The question at issue was whether and to what extent such disease or injury should be presumed to be of service origin. This question was raised most prominently by H. R. 7825, which was introduced by Representative Rankin, of Mississippi. In this it was proposed that the time limit on presumptions should be extended to January 1, 1930, and that diseases of a chronic or constitutional nature other than those already named in the law should be included in the privilege of presumption. It will be seen that this proposal did not contemplate the far-reaching and very important benefits the committee advises giving in the case of disabilities developing before January 1, 1925, and that it did contemplate a continuance of classification under which some suffering veterans would benefit and others would not. For instance, it did contemplate that a man attacked with gout in 1929 would be presumed to have incurred it as a result of something that took place before July 2, 1921, but shut out the man attacked by pneumonia, even though it might be urged that he fell as easy prey to it because his powers of resistance had been weakened by poison gas in the war.

This illustration is not presented to suggest that all disease appearing from 1925 to 1930 should be presumed to be of service origin, but to show that any classification may result in gross unfairness. As a