To this query the answer is that there are alternatives, other very considerable extra-social factors to be noted, but that catastrophe was itself the precipitating factor there is little room for doubt. Of the other factors two only are of sufficient weight for our present consideration. The earliest in order of time, and perhaps also in rank of importance is that which Halifax residents understand as the coming of the new ocean terminals. The coming was so sudden in the nature of its announcement, and meant for many so much depreciation in property values, that it had something of the nature of catastrophe within it. It altered very extensively the previously accepted ideas of residential and business and industrial sections of the city, and caused a jolt in the body politic, such as had not visited it for years--not since the middle of the nineteenth century brought the revolutionizing steam. It is not to be denied that this factor has contributed not a little to the weakening of immobility, and the preparation of the ground for an inrush of the spirit of progress. The other factor was the war. The war functioned mightily in community organization for service. It brought prosperity to many a door, and whetted the appetite of many a merchant to put the business of peace on a war basis. But it would be merely speculation to say that prosperity would have continued in peace. Indeed such a conclusion would not be historically justifiable. Halifax has been through three important wars. In each, "trade was active, prices were high, the population increased, industry was stimulated by the demand, rents doubled and trebled, streets were uncommonly busy." But in each case also Halifax settled back to her ante-bellum sluggishness. In 1816 Halifax began to feel the reaction consequent upon the close of a war. The large navy and army were withdrawn and Halifax and its inhabitants "bore the appearance of a town at the close of a fair. The sudden change from universal hustle and business to ordinary pursuits made this alteration at times very perceptible. Money gradually disappeared and the failure of several mercantile establishments added to the general distress." But the closing of the war, now a hundred years later, has exhibited no such relapse. On the other hand Halifax grows daily more prosperous and progressive than before. Her bank clearings do not fail, but rather increase. There is clearly some further influence associated with this change. But there is a very real sense in which the war may indeed be said to have been the factor,--if we mean by it the fact that through the war and as a direct result of war-service the city was laid half in ruins by possibly the greatest single catastrophe on the American Continent. If we mean this, we have named the all-precipitating and determining event. The catastrophe was an episode of the great war.