Principles of Reconstruction

Abstract

NOW that the armistice has been signed and the prospect of peace in the near future is happily assured, it is inevitable that the whole nation should be impatient to get back to its normal activities. Four years of interruption in the ordinary life of a community is a serious break in the regular and ordered continuity of its existence, but whether it is an unmixed evil will depend upon the lessons and experiences to which it has given rise, and upon the extent to which those lessons and experiences are heeded. There has necessarily been a great dislocation of industry, and the forces of production have to a very large extent been made subservient to the demands of war. The immediate problem before us now is how to divert, with the least amount of friction and in the shortest possible time, the enormous amount of energy which has been devoted to the prosecution of war into the manifold channels of civil life and peaceful occupation.