But if we recite these and other intangible and indirect costs that might be named, then we are equally justified in looking for the benefits derived from our participation in the war; and we find these benefits to be great ones. First of all, we gained the victory; and that alone, and especially so because the cause of America was righteous, was worth all it cost in blood and money and burdens shouldered for the future. We gained, moreover, a state of preparedness for war that would have been impossible of attainment under any other circumstances. In the reserves of supplies we have equipment ready to arm 1,000,000 men as rapidly as they can take the field. In the reserves of machinery we have a potential war industry capable of maintaining such an army until industry generally can take up the manufacture of munitions. Not again during the existence of the present generation should we, if the emergency came, have to experience the uncertainties and delays of 1917 in the production of supplies. We have within our war reserves the machinery and the materials for producing all the more difficult sorts of munitions, and we have, moreover, preserved records of how to produce them. Then, again, the health of the nation has presumably gained a benefit from the experience. Hundreds of thousands of young men were removed from sedentary occupations and placed in the vigorous, ordered, athletic regimen of camp life. Several months of this, on the average, did not fail to have its effect, and the medical records of the Army showed a marked increase in the average weight of soldiers during the war. Akin to this consideration is the fact that men were picked up from farms, villages, and city neighborhoods and transported to distant parts of the earth. This travel broadened thousands of them, quickened their ambition, and strengthened their life purposes. Moreover, the men of the Army were thoroughly mixed in the ranks and services. The boy from Maine fraternized with the one from Arizona, and Illinois and Virginia sent their sons to be comrades. Sectional, national, and even racial lines disappeared in the ranks. This extensive regional interacquaintanceship is to-day a national asset. The infiltration of 4,000,000 men who secured these individual benefits into the civilian life of America is calculated to elevate the physical, mental, and moral tone of the whole nation and to improve America’s homogeneity.