SEVEN GOOD THINGS COMING OUT OF

THE WAR

If you think war is entirely evil, you are wrong. Because anything out of which good comes cannot be judged apart from this ultimate good. You cannot estimate the worth of anything without reckoning the by-products of that thing. And I am going to give in this article what seem to me the spiritual by-products of this war.

The crucifixion of Jesus, the poisoning of Socrates, the assassination of Lincoln, seemed to be unqualifiedly evil. Yet out of them came tremendous spiritual potencies for good. And from this war today are coming beautiful and wonderful reactions which are changing, for the better, the soul of the nation.

Thrift

The most evident good thing the war has brought out in us is Thrift. John Muir said that the first Liberty Loan was the birth of American thrift. As a people, we have been notoriously profiigate. We have produced more wealth in one century than Europe has in ten. But we have flung it out of the window with both hands.

When men were piling up dizzy fortunes in a few years, what had we to do with savings ? Unbounded opportunity bred recklessness. Housewives wasted, traveling salesmen lived like princes, merchants plunged, college boys reveled in luxury, politicians squandered, the pork-barrel overflowed, and the national bird seemed to be an Eva Tanguay, screaming to the four winds, “I don't care !" Then we

were suddenly confronted with Danger. Danger is the best teacher in the world. It can teach a boy to swim. It can make a man out of a careless youth in a day. It can transform a timid woman into a raging lion. It is the test of human mettle. It is the developer of souls.

Danger has made the American people thrifty overnight. We have subscribed for Liberty Loans of staggering size. Yet the amount of deposits in the savings-banks has not decreased. What all our preaching and warning could not do, Danger has done.

And the result will be twofold. It will not only make the people thrifty, but it will show Big Business that it is better to sell stock in lumps of $100 than in lumps of $10,000; baby bonds are better, both for buyer and for seller, than big bonds.

The director of a New York railroad once com. plained to me of what seemed to him a particularly oppressive piece of legislation. He held it was unfair to the railways. "Why is it?” he said. “Are we not public servants ? Aren't we doing good and useful work for the people? Yet every time they get a chance their legislators take a crack at us.

"I will tell you why," I answered. “It's because you have no vision. When you want fifty million dollars to build new lines or to buy locomotives you go down to Wall Street, pay a fat commission, and get your money from wealthy gentlemen in sums from one thousand to one hundred thousand dollars. The result is that when railroad matters come up in the legislature the only people who are directly interested are these wealthy gentlemen. And there are not enough of them.

"Now, instead, suppose you sold your securities out of the ticket-window in every station of your line, in one hundred or even in ten dollar amounts, directly to the people. If your stocks and bonds were held by thousands of persons all over the state, by the legislators themselves, and the people who elect them, then, when your railroad interests were brought up in the law-making body, it would be 'Our Road,' not ‘Their Road.' They would all have an interest in its prosperity.” The small folks have the money, too. There is no money in Wall Street; only pieces of paper representing money. Rich men's money is out at work—in the hands of the day laborers, mechanics, section-hands, small tradespeople, and servants. It is these people who ought to be investing in Big Business. For the financial problem of this country is not what to do with a thousand dollars, but what to do with a hundred.

And this time of stress has shown us the way. When the United States Government is not above soliciting the Little People for their quarters for War Stamps, and their fifty dollars for War Bonds, Big Business will learn its lesson. It is learning it. On my desk lies a circular of one of the soundest and largest manufacturing concerns of the country, offering its securities, in small lots, to its employees and to the people generally. This points the way to the true Democratization of Wealth. It will do much to unify the interests of Capital and Labor. It will help to disarm the Demagogue and to humanize the Magnate.

Discipline This war is bringing to all of us the inestimable blessing of Discipline.

Discipline is doing what you don't want to do.

It is resisting a lower desire in order to indulge a higher.

It is putting away the tempting Mess of Pottage so as not to lose the Inheritance.

It is the Setting-Up Exercise of the soul.

And there are more people right now in the United States doing what they don't want to do than ever before. It is putting iron into the national blood. It means health and dynamic force.

There are a million or so of young men in the cantonments who were just at that age where discipline is most needed, and most hated. Soldiering was not an American profession. These boys have not chosen military life as a promising career, but as an unpleasant necessity.

There are artists, authors, bookkeepers, musicians, salesmen, lawyers, and the like, in the camps, working as day laborers. There are college men and rich men's sons handling the pick and currying mules. Did they choose to do this because they liked it? They did not. But they are doing it, anyhow. And singing the while.

Twelve hundred colored drafted men went down one winter night to Camp Upton. They arrived in the dark about eleven o'clock. It was raining and freezing. Many of the men were without overcoats. And they were soft, having been waiters, clerks, and in other indoor occupations. They arrived at the camp soaked to the skin, tired and hungry. Were they cursing and grumbling? No. They came in singing:

“Good-by, Lenox Avenue; Hello, Berlin!" And their melodious negro, voices rang out in cheerful defiance to the angry night, to the hard