These two facts alone are of tremendous importance. But besides this,
the activity of those who stay at home is called into play in a thousand
different ways, and economic and social life leave their well-trodden paths
in answer to the imperious call of national necessity. Social institutions
of all kinds are inevitably led into new fields of thought and action, and
States are driven to untried experiments in communal activity. The usual
channels of thought dry up, the flood of new ideas and of old ideas
throbbing with a new life rushes on unconfined, here in the shallows, there
in the deeps, presently to overflow into the old channels, cleansing their
beds and giving them a new direction, and linking up in fruitful union but
remotely connected streams. When fighting ceases and there comes the calm
of peace, society will tend to revert to its normal functions, based on
peace; but the society of yesterday can never return. Social life cannot be
the same as it was before, not merely because those activities called forth
by the war may persist in some form, but because of the growth of new ideas
under the stimulus of the war. The struggle will almost certainly set in
progress trains of thought not only connected with questions of war and
peace, but with the wider questions of human destiny.

Coming to a closer view of the question, we must distinguish between the
immediate effects of the war which are already in evidence and the ultimate
effects which will but begin to unfold themselves after the return of
peace. Some of the latter results will grow out of the immediate effects;
others will be more directly due to the events following on the conclusion
of the war. It will also be advisable to distinguish between the economic
reactions of the war, and the broader social consequences. At such an
early stage it would be presumptuous and tempting Providence to attempt to
forecast the future in any detail or to try to trace the play and interplay
of the various forces going towards the making of the future. This chapter
will be concerned with broad tentative generalisations on quite simple
lines.

One of the things which struck the intelligent working man during the early
days of the war was the rapidity with which the State acted in the face of
the crisis. In next to no time large measures of State control and
action were put successfully into operation and those who had advocated
co-operative action in the past with but indiff