rporation earnings, the war taxes. On the other hand, thought is
so stimulated that everything is questioned: our political system, our
social institutions--marriage, the family, education. As some one says,
"Nothing is radical now." We probably shall escape a sudden revolution,
but the conflict must produce profound readjustment in every aspect of
our life; for thought and action must come measurably together, since
they are related as soul and body.

There are singular eddies in the main current both ways. For instance,
the exigencies and sufferings of war produce a reaction toward narrower,
orthodox forms of religion and a harsher spirit of nationalism; while in
fields of action apart from the struggle, freedom and even license may
increase, as in sex-relations. Nevertheless these cross-currents, while
they may obscure, do not alter the main tendencies, which move swiftly
and increasingly toward the essential conflict.

Even before our actual entrance into the War, its profound influence
upon both our thinking and our conduct and institutions was evident.
Now that we are in the conflict that influence is multiplied. We are
aroused to new seriousness of thought. The frivolity and selfish
pleasure-seeking that have marked our life for recent decades are
decreasing. We may reasonably hope that the literature of superficial
cleverness and smart cynicism, which has been in vogue for the last
period, will have had its day, that the perpetrators of such literature
will be, measurably speaking, without audience at the conclusion of the
War.

The philosophy of complacency, at least, will be at an end, and the
world will face with new earnestness the problem of life. This
generation will be tired, perhaps exhausted, by the titanic struggle;
but youth comes on, fresh and eager, with exhaustless vital energy, and
the generations to come will take the heritage and work out the new
philosophy. As Nature quickly and quietly covers the worst scars we
make in her breast, so Man has a power of recovery, beyond all that we
could dream. It is to that we must look, across the time of demoniac
destruction.

We may even dare to hope that the next half-century will see a great
development of noble literature in our own land. War for liberty,
justice and humanity always tends to create such a productive period in
literature and the other fine arts. The struggle with Persia was behind
the Periclean age in Athens. It was the