The War Department has learned so much in this great laboratory
experiment in human conduct that the impious wish sometimes arises in
one's mind that we might promptly try it all over again for the chance
of profiting by our mistakes. Thank God we can't do that, but in our
daily contact with these same men restored to their communities we can
to a certain degree carry on the work, and in so doing we can learn much
from the successes and failures of the Army.

In planning for the immediate future, there are some things which we
mustn't forget. In the first place, we mustn't expect these young men
(or any humans for that matter) to be capable of remaining at concert
pitch indefinitely.

For a while, in dealing with the soldier who has returned from overseas,
real ingenuity will be required to make much impression upon his mind.
Not only will ordinary life seem tame but, frankly, he is likely to have
been overhandled and overwelfared. If, however, we have erred in this
regard, it has been on the right side.

May I venture still another suggestion, and that is to be careful and
considerate of the soldier who, despite his earnest desire, failed to
get across, and for the matter of that, of the young man who didn't get
into the Army at all. The morale of these two groups will need our
particular care.

In closing, however, we should not end upon a note of warning, but
rather upon one of exultation; for the war has taught us, if it has
taught nothing else, that, given a great cause and a cross-section of
our heterogeneous American population, the resulting revelation of the
power of human endurance, human courage and human accomplishment comes
pretty near to proving objectively the divinity of man.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: An address delivered at the one hundredth anniversary of
the General Theological Seminary, New York, April 30, 1919.]

THE WAR AS A PRACTICAL TEST OF AMERICAN SCHOLARSHIP[2]

It is a difficult task to attempt to define the American scholar of
to-day. If any of you doubt it, let him try it as I have tried.
Scholarship, like many another broad term, has no sharply marked edges.
It is hard to define anything that lacks definiteness; and, after all,
the task is relatively profitless, because we all of us recognize what
is at the center of the concept. I think we all recognize that the
scholar is an expert in some particular field or fields; but he is more
than the expert as such, in that he