The War Risk Insurance Act entitled all officers and enlisted men in the service at that time to obtain insurance for any sum up to $10,000 if they made application within 120 days after the date of passage of the act, and pro vided that all men enlisting thereafter must make application for it within 120 days after their enlistment. For men already in the serv ice the insurance might date back to the time they entered the service.
Another feature of this act was the provision whereby a soldier or sailor might make allot ment of his pay to any one dependent upon him, and the government would supplement this with an allowance.
Organisation.— Immediately upon the pas sage of the act voluntary applications for in surance began to pour in. The first came from Lieut Coke Flannagan of the army, for the maximum $10,000. By cablegram on 12 Nov. 1917, General Pershing applied for the maxi mum insurance for himself, at the same time thanIcing the government in the name of the army in France for giving to the soldiers a privilege which no other cotmtry had ever ex tended to its fighting men.
The Military and Naval Division of insur ance was thus added to the Marine and Sea men's Division and the two divisions were still presided over by the original director, Mr. DeLanoy. To the general direction of the work Hon. Thomas B. Love of Texas was called as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of War Risk Insurance and Internal Revenue. At this time the late Maj. Willard D. Straight of New York was summoned to Washington to command the War Risk Section for duty over seas. If the insurance plan was to be the broad, beneficent plan intended, every man in the serv ice should be insured. To get the 1,500,000 men already in the army and the navy land sign up the thousands and tens of thousands being added daily and weekly to the war force was a Herculean task even if a big organization had been devised for this work. But there was no organization. The War Risk Bureau had two rooms in the basement of the Treasury building. It had to get thousands of clerics to handle the colossal yohime of papers. It had to spread its canvassers in camps in America and camps in Europe, in navy stations in America, in England and in France, and elsewhere. It had to jump in a few weelcs frotn a bureau with 20 clerks to one with thousands of clerks. The housing
of the bureau presented extreme difficulties. Seemingly every available foot of office space had already been taken over by one or another branches of the government. Various old de partments and not a few new ones were having structures built for them hastily and mean while were (camping out) wherever they could find space. There vras a great scarcity of labor, particularly slcilled labor. There was still a greater scarcity of office workers, particularly trained office workers.
The life insuance division which was known in the beginning merely as the ((Underwriters Section) was under the immediate direction of Mr. Fred O'Neil, who accomplished tlae pioneer veork and was later succeeded by Mr. John M. Gaines, a member of the Actuarial Society of America, who contributed distinguished service in systematizing the records of War Risk Within five days of the passage of the act in October 1917 the bureau sent insurance ap plications to every military and naval station. At the same time the adjutant general tele graphed every department, commander, explain ing the opportunities and privileges the new law extended to the men— how for an average cost of $8 per $1,000 per year for policies up to $10,000, any and every officer and man in army and navy could insure his life, make provision for wife, child, mother or dependent in case of his death or disability.
A few days later representatives of the rank and file of even, military unit in the United States met in Washington, summoned by tele graph by the governinent to receive first hand information concerning the construction and operation of the Insurance Act. The Secretary of War, Newton D. Balcer, and the Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, took an active part in forming this organization to co-ordi nate in the field.
In the beginning the Allotment and Allow ance Division was under the direction of Mr. F. C. Brown; later the leadership passed to Mr. Dudley Cates; and the activity of these officials is reflected by the fact that before the armis tice was signed there were on file in the bureau in Washington the applications for allotment and allowance of more than 4,003,000 men.