BLINDED SOLDIERS.
pro TUE EDITOR, OF TEE "SrEcTA.rox."3 SIR,—It is now just six months since we started here to teach men who have lost their sight at the front to be blind and to acquire some congenial and profitable form of employment. We began with a dozen men, who came from a temporary establishment where conditions of space only permitted the teaching of Braille and typewriting. Our Roll Call now comprises one hundred and live names. We have been obliged to spend some thousands of pounds in. the erection of workshops and sleeping quarters, and I am proud and happy to he able to say that the success of the enterprise has exceeded the most sanguine expectations of its promoters. Fourteen of our men will within the next few weeks be established in different parts of the country as poultry farmers, market gardeners, mat-makers, or cobblers, and all of these men can read and write Braille well and can use the ordinary typewriter. Others who are learning the trades just mentioned, or who are becoming masseurs, fruit farmers, carpenters, basket-makers, shorthand-writers, and divers, will week by week give Way to newcomers from the hospitals.
The two occupations last named may strike your readers as being odd ones for blind men to pursue. Shorthand.. writing and typewriting, however, are well within the capacities of the intelligent blind. Many men in the New Army left situations as shorthand-writers to join the colours, and some of these have returned bereft of their sight. By mastering a system of highly condensed Braille specially devised for shorthand-writing, they will experience no insuperable difficulties in becoming once again rapid and competent shorthand-writers and typists. I am glad to say their old employers are keeping places open for them when they are proficient.
Diving is, I think, a quite new occupation for blind people. The diver who is building breakwaters and piers works in the dark, for even if the water is clear his work disturbs it and renders it impossible for him to see anything through it. The diver is one of the best paid of workmen. He has an attendant to look after him while below and when be returns to the surface, and the occupation is one which I think will prove to be extremely suitable to intelligent blinded soldiers and sailors who have had some mechanical training.
Massage is taught at the newly equipped department for its instruction at the National Institute for the Blind. Here is a special gymnasium, skeleton and models, and other requisites for the scientific training of the masseur. Our boating season ended on Thursday with a race against Emanuel College, Wandsworth Common, at Putney. Racing has been keenly and eagerly taken up by blinded soldiers, and besides practice on Regent's Park lake, we have had several events on the Thames, in which the rowers have acquitted themselves in a manner that has astonished experts. Pushball, especially arranged for blind players, will take the place of hard rowing exercise during the winter months.
Officers are now accommodated at 21 Portland Place, which has been generously lent by Sr John and Lady Stirling:. Maxwell. Six are in residence there, and this number will shortly be doubled. They are a bright and cheery coterie, busy and eager to learn; indeed, I do not think there are any happier places than the house which shelters them, and St. Dunstan's.
May I venture to hint to those of your readers who have such things to spare that we are always glad of presents of 'towers and fruit, especially apples, and that cakes and cigarettes also are most heartily welcome ? And may I also point out that our ever.increasing numbers lead to an everincreasing rate of expenditure P We have received gratifying assistance towards this lately from families of gallant men who have given their country the one gift more precious than their sight—their lives; from promoters of entertainments of all sorts ; and from collections which have been organized in workshops and factories. The father of two little girls the other day sent 220, realized by a children's bazaar which his daughter of twelve and a little friend of the same age had organized.—I am, Sir, Ac., C. ARTHUR PEARSON, Chairman Blinded Soldiers' and Sailors' Care Committee.
St. Dunstan's, Regent's Park, N.W.
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