for country, and not one penny of war profit shall inure to the benefit of private individual, corporation, or combination, but all above the normal shall flow into the defense chest of the Nation.  There is something inherently wrong, something out of accord with the ideals of representative democracy, when one portion of our citizenship turns its activities to private gain amid defensive war while another is fighting, sacrificing, or dying for national preservation.

Out of such universal service will come a new unity of spirit and purpose, a new confidence and consecration, which would make our defense impregnable, our triumph assured.  Then we should have little or no disorganization of our economic, industrial, and commercial systems at home, no staggering war debts, no swollen fortunes to flout the sacrifices of our soldiers, no excuse for sedition, no pitiable slackerism, no outrage of treason.  Envy and jealousy would have no soil for their menacing development, and revolution would be without the passion which engenders it.

A regret for the mistakes of yesterday must not, however, blind us to the tasks of today.  War never left such an aftermath.  There has been staggering loss of life and measureless wastage of materials.  Nations are still groping for return to stable ways.  Discouraging indebtedness confronts us like all the war-torn nations, and these obligations must be provided for.  No civilization can survive repudiation.

We can reduce the abnormal expenditures, and we will.  We can strike at war taxation, and we must.  We must face the grim necessity, with full knowledge that the task is to be solved, and we must proceed with a full realization that no statute enacted by man can repeal the inexorable laws of nature.  Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little.  We contemplate the immediate task of putting our public household in order.  We need a rigid and yet sane economy, combined with fiscal justice, and it must be attended by individual prudence and thrift, which are so essential to this trying hour and reassuring for the future.

The business world reflects the disturbance of war’s reaction.  Herein flows the lifeblood of material existence.  The economic mechanism is intricate and its parts interdependent, and has suffered the shocks and jars incident to abnormal demands, credit inflations, and price upheavals.  The normal balances have been impaired, the channels of distribution have been clogged, the relations of labor and management have been strained.  We must seek the readjustment with care and courage.  Our people must give and take.  Prices must reflect the receding fever of war activities.  Perhaps we never shall know the old levels of wages again, because war invariably readjusts compensations, and the necessaries of life will show their inseparable relationship, but we must strive for normalcy to reach stability.  All the