For a Sick World

"You mustn't think of these people," said General Ike Eisenhower last week, "as just some sort of unfortunates . . . They are not--they are one of you. I saw a major general, one of the finest athletes of his time, definitely break--break because he could no longer sustain the agonies of combat. He could not talk to me without shaking, and he had to go home. This cannot be dismissed as not touching you personally."

General Ike was talking at a Manhattan luncheon given to raise money for the U.S. delegation to the International Congress on Mental Health, to be held in London next August. The world's mental health, the lunchers had heard, is not good. Said Dr. (formerly Brigadier General) William C. Menninger, head of Army psychiatry during World War II: "We had become aware that in the Army one out of eight men who came before the draft boards had to be rejected for mental illness . .'-. 62% in the veterans' hospitals are psychiatric problems. Half of our hospital beds in America are devoted to mental illness. We have many, many evidences of a sick world ... We wish we knew why . . . these things occur."

The London Congress will try to find out. Delegates from 55 nations (teachers, nurses, industrialists, clergymen, psychiatrists) will attack the problem of mental health all over the world, from every possible angle. They will explore the origin of group mental disorders, such as class and national hatreds and prejudice against minorities.

Said General Ike: "These gentlemen . . . are trying to find out why we don't manage to understand each other. It is not enough to say that a few men in the Kremlin will deny to a large number of people the chance to learn. It is not enough to say that our motives, which we think of as altruistic and pure, "are certainly misunderstood in South America . . . Now we must find out why we are misunderstood ... If the London Congress [begins] the solution of this problem . . . we will be doing a great deal to eliminate the causes of war. If in the measurable future we don't find some way of eliminating the causes of war, our grandchildren are going to find this world a most unhappy place in which to live ... That is important to me. I've lately had a grandson."*

*For other domestic news of General Ike, see EDUCATION.

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