dden conversions,
had hoped that the immense effort of this Great War was to awaken the
deadened conscience of the world; to leave a permanent improvement in
social and international relations; making class and individual and sex
competition, as also national rivalry, a less pronounced feature in the
new order; replacing greed by desire for service, war by a League of
Nations to enforce justice. But a war of justice was followed by a peace
of trickery and injustice. The victors (if not every one of them, still
collectively) claimed their spoils as in earlier wars. Clemenceau's
desire for vengeance triumphed over Wilson's principles in the center of
the world stage.

More than ever we search the future with anxiety. Amid the confusions
and compulsions, the changes unavoidable in this time of uncertainty, it
is immensely more difficult to act wisely. In the old days it all seemed
so much easier, as if life could be shuffled, like a pack of cards, into
new arrangements. War has made a difference to the whole of life,
shattered everything, as it were, in our hands, made the daily duties of
most of us much harder. We have been robbed of serenity.

When you stand at the threshold of this new difficult world, knowing, as
I do, that the milestones marking the backward path tell you, with
certainty, that the greater part of your life and your work lies behind
you, then, in these waiting days of urgency, you will want to hold a
reckoning with yourself and with life, in humility to question
everything, your own faith and what you have tried to teach to others
with all the honesty you have.

My task has been a difficult one, and it is made much more difficult by
reason of the uncertainties of our outlook, because there are now so
few principles accepted by all of us as true; every principle is faced
by a counter principle. It is so much easier to have fixed standards of
conduct than to argue every case that occurs. We have failed in every
direction to establish ideals fine enough and complete enough, and
useful enough to hold our imagination and our wills. Everyone seems to
be more or less at loose ends of conflicting purposes. Morals now are
like clothes, made to measure and to fit each wearer. Too often, in
important particulars, they change as easily and foolishly as the
fashions change.

I wish to bring people back to a disciplined freedom; to a recognition
of their own needs and the needs of others--the deepest desires of