Norwich Bulletin Newspaper, January 12, 1918, Page 9

XXV wr had been in Murren about a monin we cast our eyes to the tops of th: mounta and wondered what it were pessible to ourselves. We sooft t that we could fiet be awaj ven overnight without a pass the Commandant de Place, signed by and only given with a good excuse. it was rather hard to find a sick relative n Switzerland, sightsecing. Switzerland is divided into two parts —one French and one German—which speak the language of theé ‘country on so we did not do much which they border. The Germans who are interned in Switzerland are con- fined to the German part, and _the French and English are scattered over the French half of the eountry. There is very littie mixing of enemies, ex- cept in one or two cities which Boast large hospitals, where it is necessary to send men of all nationalities for treatment. In these cities miniature wars are avoided by confining the Geérmans to their quarters on certain days of the week when the Allies are allowed out and vice versa. Good For Three of Them. Berne is the capitalof Switzeriand, the melting pot of the country. An English Tommy—an ex-prize fighter— was walking alotte on the streéts of Ferne when thrée Germans thinking it .was safe to attack a loneiy Eng- lighn:an. sprang on him. Ie.knocked two of them unconsc:éus on 'the side- k. but was unable to catch the 1 hnd become very friendly with an English captain named Brewster. Wa both needed operations and decided to 20 to Lausanne, where we could have the services~of one of the best sur- geans in the world. We had heard that it was possible to obtain permis- sion to attend. a . university. I. was very aniious to continue my stu Trench and we both wanted to study ‘l Tausanne and Lake Geneva. Event- ually we were transferred to the Lausanne district for the purpose of having éur eperations- and later at- tending the university of that city. Not long before we left, Jack First- brook. who on coming from Germany had been placed in a hospital in Berne on account of his weak condition, ar- rived in Murren with his father and mother. Mre. First brook soon took all the Canadians under her wing, and thanks to her and Mrs. McLurg, we* had “many a congenial afternoon te2 party. Things were v, pleasant, in, Mur- ren: the sking and cutiing were good, and 1 would giadly hace stayed on till the enow left, but my arm was giving me trouble and Brewster had been in this ene spot since August and was hecoming restless, so on March 5 we drpartnd for lLausanne. At Lausanne. Switzerland is a strange country in time of war. Evefy helligerent natidn has its official representatives in this litle casis in the desert of war. Be- «1d6< that, the country ig teeming with sples and deserters. In towns exelu- devoted to interned prisoners (‘||l‘ melange of nationalities is not so meed, but in Laugenne one dares make a new acquaint- nee without first ascertaining the life Listory of the person in question. ewster and T had a lively time ree weeks we spent wait- rommodation 1n the hospi- We eventually got to know the ous characters by sight and avoided “being brought Into ¢ | Médical attention and careful nursing Shoes and High Cuts YOU CAN SAVE FROM $1.00 to $3.00 A PAIR Buy.them right now and save money touch with them. However, we did make . the - acquaifitance of many chafiming -~ people—chiefly * -American and Swiss—and were shown great hos- pitality, The day after we were, admitted to the hospital T had a sudén attack-of appendicitis, and was at once operat- ed upon. I thanked my ‘lucky stars stars that I was not still in Germany, for complications set in and a second operation was_ necessary. Skillful pulled me through a critical stage. Brewster had the operation on his leg and we shared a private ward. We were the first English officers tha® had ever been in _that hosPltdl and- at- tracted, for that reason, a considerable amount of attention. Our room was continually filled with flowers, and we had numerous visits from our ac- quaintances, who showered us with.| gifts. One motherly Swiss lady kept up_supplied with homeémade " jelly. We gdw a ‘good" deal of seierall French officers who had .come' there to have the mistakes of the German doctors rectified. One of these had a most trying time. His thighbone: had been “shatteréd, and- after months 1n’ plaster the bone had finally knitted. Che day he was being carried down- stairs by some German orderlies who dropped him and broke his leg again. After several rponths more of agony the bone finally knitted, but in such a manyier that the joint formed almost a right angle. His leg was very much shorter and virtually useless. In the hospital in Lausanne, the bone had to be broken again, a pin put through i the knee, weights were attached to.it and the poor feilow had again to en- dure sleepless weeks of torture in an endeavor to finally overcome the re- sults of more than a year of careless treatment. While sitting around -a cozy wood fire and entertaining our friends at| afternoon tea we often contracted our life there "with the months spent in German hospitals. It was a wonderful thing to be again among sympathetic people. After six weeks I was discharged from -hospital, the operation on my m" foar Who. Ba ke e ‘penty and shotmaking, pictabed here, - arm being postponee - antil I was stfonger. About a month later Brewster joined me at the little hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva, where I had taken up my abode. We regis- tered at the university. Brewster, who had lived in Paris and spoke French fluently. took up engineering, but I en- rolled in a course in the French langu- age. Seven or eight English Tommies attended the same lectures as I, and the’ professor was most skillful in de- tecting from their accent the partic- ular part of England from which they came, During our spare time ws did a great deal of sailing, and I played ten- nig almost exery day. Life in Laus- anne-was pleasant, but we were never able to forget that we were prisoners of war and unable to go home. I eventually had the operation on my arm, but managed to avoid a fur- ther ‘Stay in the hospital..I had had more than eight months of hospital life and did not relish ‘he 1dea of an- BIG FLOOD SHOE SALE —AT THE— beckton Sample Shoe Store SACRIF ICED—$15,000 STOCK OF MEN'S, WOMEN'S AND CHILDREN'S SHOES WILL BE SOLD AT COST PRICES MUST BE SOLD RIGHT NOW —NOTICE— MEN'S BEST MAKES WOMEN’S BEST MAKES . Dressy Shoes and Good Working Shoes, Elkskin | Shoes 8/9 and 10-inch, High Cut, Lace and But- ton Shoes, Black and Havana Brown, Gray Kid and Suede, White Kid and Nubuck, and-also 0x- fords and Pumps and Canvas Shoes. | “ You can save from $2.00 to $4.00 on a pair. As the Market Prices on Shoes are Going Up Daily, Take This Opportunity, as We are Compelled to Sell Our Stock Right Now ‘ mmm ' s The camp at Murren was a complete ¢ ommunity. Industries, such as car- were carried on extensively. other session. Accordingly, I arrang- ed with Brewster to bring me back in a tasi to the hotel after the operation I was three hours under the anesthe- tic, and was put in a ward full of Frénchmen to recover. For some un- accountable reason, when I came to I was _thinking in French and shouting “A bas les Boches! Cochons! etc. {Down with the Huns! Pigs!- ever I went back to the hospital for a dressing these.men would smile at me and say: “A Dbas les Boches!” Brewster wrapped me in rugs and hurried me to the hotel, where the concierge was sent for to help me to my room. He, poor fellow, thought % was drunk,sand handled me in the pa- tronizing way usually employed to- ward gentlemen in this state. A kind English lady who knew that had happened came to see if there was anything she could do. The con- cierge waved her aside, saying in French: “Hg's all right, madam. Leave risnces of & Wounded ands of &‘. lm_ 4 han’d ‘Whene B but it was undoubtedly negligence on Brockton Sample Shoe 138 Main Street, Norwich, Conn. 'him afone; hnwqumrlrhluur a Ht{h slecp"' We for jnduee ‘and rlxh'. 2 felt that . now we could sH our cousins to the south by the aend welcome thém'to the great- est of all undertakings and that after the war there would not be the feel- ing of reproach which we had dreaded so much. 'We all realized the tre- mendous power of our mew ally, and hoped, from a selfish point of view: ek e assistance might bring the war to a speedy close and so hasten ‘our return-to our homes and families. Toward thelend of July one of tiw officers staying in our hotel received a telephone message from 'Chateau D’ Oex to the effect that the British and German sovernmantu had come to terms regarding - the repatriation of certain interned prisoners of war, and that before long we might expect to be visited by a Swiss commission to sel:fit those eligible to go home. urally, this caused a great flutter of excitement. 'We had been expecting it for some time past, as at the rail- way station of Lausanne we had said good-by to large numbers of our French comrades, on their way back to their nauve land. Aboiit the same time as we received this good™news the -university closed and the doctor with whom Brewster and I had been massage and mechanical treatment decided to go away for 4 holiday.- We had no ex- cuse left for staying longer in Laus- anne and on Aungust I we, together with eeveral others, were recalled to Murren to take over some of the du- ties which ‘were-falling' rather heavily on the few rem: g officers. (Continued Monday.) * | BOY UNDERGOES TEN OPERATIONS (Conunuea l‘zum -Page Hight.) machine can hardly be'lopked upon as two separate lines of work, when we think of hini’ just & short while bafore leaving the -doubler to go on to the cans, and the Bibeault boy going on to the doubler machine almost immedi- ately and having some treuble with it —we could hardly, think that it would be reasonahle for/Bibeault not to call upon LeDue to help him put the belt on again, when LeDuc had been in | full charge of it and running it so short a time before.. To say that Le- Duc was not running this particular machine and had absolutely no busi- ness around it would: not be strictly correct when the facts showed that he had hardly left it and might be called back to it almost SRy minute to again operate’ it. The situation as it appears to me was simply this: That he was tempo- rarily’ taken off of the:deublers, how long he would remain off from them was not shown, but from the fact that he was off of the machine only a very few minutes and had beeh put off of it before, and then put back again— these ‘facts would lead one to believe that he would unquestionably be put back on to it again, and the fact is that these boys had been changed back and forth quité frequently, as shown | by the testimony, _ Employment Was “Interchangeable. ! The wo! of operating a doubler machine -is not, of course, necessa.rily dependent upon running a set of cards, so far as the machinery itself is concerned, hut the émployment of these two boys was interchangeable, iand it is proven by the testimony that | llhes« two boys were in the habit o( helping each other-put the belt on the i machine, and that this special machine had given considerable trouble with | the belt slipping off, and 'this fact was | Known. to. the employer, and bhoth the overseer and the fixer admitted it. LeDuc was injured while on duty la.nd during his working hours and the accident happened when the claimant was at a place where it might be rea- sonable to expect him to be. Ho had been there a short time before and might be sent there at any time in the ifuture. He was doing nothing to serve his own ends especially but rather to { get the machine working again for the benefit of the employer, as was ad- ‘mitted by both Flagg and McCann, imant's part to attempt to replace ¢ belt in the manner undertaken by i him, but he had often done it before ! with Bibeault’s help and succeeded in i getting the machine running without assistance from the fixer, but negli- gence on the part of the employe, of course, is of no_consideration under the workmen's compensation act. It was more oFf an error of -judgment on the part of the boy who asksd the claimant to assist him, as well as an error of judgment on the part of the boy who assisted and who received such a-serious injury, than a case of| wilful disregard for rules of the com-: | pany, which rules it does not appear | had been very vigorously enforced. The | only gain which would accrue to any- | one from the performance of the vvorkK which resulted in this serious injury | wag accruing to the employer. If the' work of replacing belts was expected to be done by no one but the fixer, then it would be fair to presume that the fixer should be where he could easily be found by an employe, but there §s nothing to show that the youthful fixer who was on the job that night was where he could be found with a reasonable effort on the part of the employe, nor was he in sufficiently close touch with the work which he awas expected to oversee so that in case these boys were attempting to do something contrary to rule that they might be stopped and prevented from receiving serious injury; so that lack of proper supervision might almost be as justly claimed a cause for the in- jury as poor judgment on the part of the boys in the present case. No Notices Posted. Both the overseer Flagg and the fiter McCann admitted that to their knowledge there were no notices Post- -ed in the mill to the effect that em- Rldves should not replace belts, and thepralso admitted as: before stated before, and that such things are done in all mijls, and they also admitt4d that 6n this occasion the boy had no intention of «'injuring himself, and whatever value accrued to anybody would accrue to the emplover, either in speeding up the work ar fin econ- omy of time saved by the. employes doing the work themselves instead of spending considerable time in looking for a fixer who was not on the floor and who was not easily accessible at thevtime, and the fixer stated that a that the boys had done these things| $17.50 - NOW $9.95 140 Main Street, " e Spacitlty Shep ON ALL Suits, Coats, Dresses, Etc. SUITS COATS $24.50 - NOW $14.95 DRESSES $38.50 NOW $22.50 | BON-TON CORSETS, M. & P., AND ROYAL WOR- CESTER CORSET 10 % OFF. i GET A DOLLY VARDEN WORK BASKET $1.39. THE SPECIALTY SHOP Opposite Plaut-Cadtlen Co. would endeavor to please both sides, still it is evident that in the main }‘t coincided with that of the claimant's. As stated above, I consider it an error of judgment on the part of thesp two boys to attempt to replace the belt in the manner stated, but this is one of | those errors of judgment which is con- tinually occurring in manufacturing plants of this kind, espewdlly wHere there is not an overseer in the imme- diate vicinity at all times to supervise youthful employes, and it is a circum- stance which will probably occur very frequently, and it is just such an error of judgment on the part of employes that the workmen’s compensation act was intended to compensate injured employes for. There could be no ele- ment of serious and wilful misconduct in the case before us as there was nothing in the evidence to show that the injury received by the claimant was due to any wilfulness on his part, ‘but rather a willingness on his part to do a service for a fellow employe which must ultimately: accrue to the advan- tage of the employer, and possibly to his own, in case he might be sent back to the same machine within a short time, and in attempting to help a fel- ow employe this unfortunate accident occurred, but if it had not occurred the company would have been the win- ner by the operation. If all these things had been in existence and lived up to, and if it had been an established and enforged rule that employes should not put belts on themselves, it migi be that a different view of thig case could be taken, and a different conclu- sion reached. Notices Should Be P-!ntad In the absence of any written notice to the effect—that certain rules must not be violated, it seems to me that if we are to accept the testimony of the respondents that a violatiow of such a rule would be considered ‘a gross misdemeanor, then it would cer- tainly seem that it was deserving of sufficient attention on the part of the respondents to have such rules in printed form and in places where the employes could thoroughly understand what they are to be confronted with' in case such wviolations occur. But in opposition to, the claims and testimgny of the injured party, all we are con- fronted with is the verbal testimony of {a respondents’ witness who is more or less of an inferested witness for | various ‘obvious reasons, such as re- taining a position with the company or maintaining standing with the em- loyer, and it seems to be the history of these cases that they are perfectly willing to sacrifice the interest of the injured party so long as they can place themselves in a more desirable light before their emrployer and often times the facts are not adhered to as strictly as they should be on acgount of their-desires in these respects. Summary. Of course it is contended by the re- spondents that the claimant should not receive compensation, as he was-en- gaged (so they state) in an employ- ment which was no part.of his work; that he was injured on a machine which he was not supposed to be oper- ating at that particular time, and they also claim that the injury’ (1) did not arise in the course of the employ- half hour before the accident he was calted to replace the belt' on the doubler machine nexp to the ‘one on which LeDuc was injured. The testimony ‘of Bibeault I shoula consider practically substantiated that of ‘LeDuc, and while it was of a char- acter which ‘at'times appeared a little confusing and like -a witness ‘who Plush Coats; Comforters and Blankets Promptly and Satisfactorily Cleaned Telephone Call 743-2 ment, and (2) that it did not arise out of the employment. If we were to agree with the conten- tions of-the respondents that (1) when the claimant was injured he was do- Ing work -which he was not engaged to perform, and (2) that at the time of the injury he was in a territory witi which he "had nothing fo do, there would be an abundance of cases which -could be cited to deny the claimant spmpensation. The respond- ents’ attorney had cited a number of them in his brief, but we cannot agree , with his contentions in these respects for ‘reasons which have been previous- ly stated in this memorandum; viz., that LeDuc’s work was-of an inter- changeable character, at one tims op- erating a doubler machine, and at an- other time running the cards or tak- Ing care of the cans., J£ we believe the claimant’s story, which was uncontradicted, that he was told by a fixer (who was not pro- duced, at the hearing), to put the belt on himself, we believe his scope of employment was enlarged by such an order, and we have cited a number of cases to substantiate this claim. But even if we did not accept his state- ment .on this particular point,-and he was simply assisting this fellow em- ploye on agmachine which he might reasonably Be expected to know some- thing about, -we are still supported by the cases cited above where employes were injured while assisting fellow employes, in which cases it was held that the injuries arose out of and in the course of employment and com-i pensation was awarded. As previously stated, if we accept the premises laid down in the brief of| the respondents we would unquestion- ably do nothing but deny compensation to the claimant, but for reasons al- ready given we cannot agrep with the claims of the respondents, and feel that ‘industry and thrift should not be penalized by denying compensation to an employe who is willing to go out of his way and do a little more than; he is really paid to do, especially when it is to the advantage of the employ- er, and where there is nothing to chow that hi§ own.work was being neglect- ed in the meantime; also in view of the fact that the respondents had knowledge that employes were in the habit of replacing belts themselves, that it 'was a custom in mills in gen- eral; that they’ had not enforced any rule to the effect that this should not be done and that no notices had been posted in the mill to that effect. Commissioner Awards Compensatoin. I feel that it is in conformity with the spirit of Workmen’s Compensation Laws to place a liberal construction upon them, so that employes may re- | cpive compensation for injuries which arise out of and ‘in.the course of em- ployment, and in the present instance I firmly believe and have so found that the injury to LeDuc is one which did S0 arise and have accordingly award- ed- compensation. - e NO WINTER COATS PACKED AWAY at The Pasnik Co, so if you wish a Ladies’ or Childs’ Coat, the price will Jan12SW never stop you 150 Main Street, in Postal Telegraph Office "1 GIVE Us A TRIAL. FREE AUTO DELIVERY