the Labor party, are putting forward their programmes.
Conferences and lectures on reconstruction are multiplied and
literature on the subject pours from the press."

"Great ideas," said Wilson, "at last have captured the hearts of the
common people and directed into positive channels and constructive
programmes the very energies which otherwise may have spent themselves
in the acts of retributive destruction." Reconstruction! This is now
the world's watch-word. It sums up the various problems with which
nations will have to grapple in every realm of human activity. It
speaks of conditions that are no more and suggests new outlines of the
social order. Our present and pressing duty then is to weigh the
anchor, to swing out into the middle stream and take our course on the
permanent principles of Catholic Truth. These principles stand on the
shores of History as the great revolving lights that sweep the high
seas in the darkness of night.

Canada, after having bravely and generously solved the problems of war,
is now also facing "the greater problems of peace." This period of
reconstruction, more than that of the war, will test our national
fibre. The strain will be greater for the conflict is being lifted to
a higher plane, that of ideas. But nowhere in Canada will this vast
work of readjustment be more tangible than in our Great West. The
youth of that part of the country, and the dominating factors of the
national problem will, we believe, make the West the classical land of
reconstruction. A gradual evolution will bring our Eastern Provinces
to readjust themselves to the changing conditions of political and
economic life. The West, on the contrary, has in such matters the
beautiful qualities, the unlimited resources of youth, but also its
dangerous shortcomings. Daring, venturous, over-confident in
democracy, the Western mind is frequently most hasty and radical in its
conclusions. It has not been matured by time, that great teacher of
patience and moderation; experience has not, as yet, tempered that
feverish and progressive youthfulness, so prone to speedy and often
drastic legislation. The heat of fever is often mistaken for the glow
of health. And as legislation is in the minds of the Western people
the panacea of all evils in society, will not the common tendency be to
carry on the work of reconstruction by parliament bills and
orders-in-council? Is there not here a great danger? "The danger o