The wielder of the pen is now able to face the problems of life and deal with the principles of truth with an open mind. This has not been true with most since the war began. The weakness of human nature overcame many minds which before the war had manifested commendable poise and evident sincerity. In Germany and in almost every other country as well, erstwhile careful thinkers seemed to cast to the winds all the calmness of reason and temper of soul they had ever possessed. There was a perfect Babel of efforts to prove that all the right was on one side and all the wrong on the other. Butchers were whitewashed into angels, and champions of justice were caricatured into buffoons by pens which were supposed to be dedicated to the telling of the truth. During the year 1916, a German anthropologist published an article in which he proved, to his own satisfaction, that to be a Frenchman necessarily meant to be a moral degenerate. During the same year, a French anthropologist proved, with equal fervor and with equal satisfaction to himself, that to be a German necessarily meant to be a criminal lunatic. So long as such conceptions prevail in the minds of thinkers and investigators, there can be neither literature nor science of any dependable sort. It may be some time before the squint of prejudice is entirely removed from the thinking of the various peoples involved in the war. Gradually, however, it must necessarily relax from its violence. Thinkers should now do their best to work with only truth for a standard. The saner our reconstruction writings prove, the more potent they will be. Nothing but truth can ultimately prevail. While the war, as is always the case with wars, has caused much violent prejudice, and has led many talented people to defend a cause in forgetfulness of truth, it has at the same time performed one great service to literature. It has served to bring the work of writers on the various subjects down from the ethereal heights of mystical theory to the solid levels of plain thinking and everyday living. In order to produce the materials and solve the problems necessary to the winning of the war, Science was obliged to turn its work into the most practical channels. No thoughtful person will insinuate that Science is useless since it has helped us in so many ways to save the day in a great national emergency. The completeness of the abandon with which scientific investigators and writers gave themselves to war problems is evidenced by the fact that at the 1917 meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, almost every address dealt with some problem incident to the war and the needs of the nation.