The truth is, the war was largely paid for, not by taxes or loans but by the High Cost of Living. The result is that the effort to avoid discontent of tax payers has created or rather aggravated the discontent over high prices. Every rise in the cost of living brings new recruits to the labor malcontents who feel victimized by society and have come to hate society. They cite, in their indictment, the high price of necessities and the high profits of certain great corporations both of which they attribute, not to the aberrations of our monetary yardstick but to deliberate plundering by "profiteers" or a social system of "exploitation." They grow continually more suspicious and nurse an imaginary grudge against the world. We are being threatened by more quack remedies--revolutionary socialism, syndicalism, and Bolshevism. Radicalism rides on the wave of high prices. As a matter of fact, the real wages in 1918, that is, their purchasing power, were only 80 per cent. of the real wages of 1913. That is, while the retail prices of food advanced 68 per cent., wages in money advanced only 30 per cent. The real wages of 1913 were in turn less than in earlier years. Lord D'Abernon, in a recent speech in the House of Lords said: "I am convinced and cannot state too strongly my belief that 80 per cent. of our present industrial troubles and our Bolshevism which is so great a menace to Europe are due to this enormous displacement in the value of money." In fact, before the war, rising costs of living were manufacturing socialists all over the world, including Germany, and the German Government may have weighed, as one of the expected dynastic advantages of war, the suppression of the growing internal class struggle which this high cost of living was bringing on apace. MANY SUGGESTED REMEDIES INADEQUATE We are now ready for the question, "What can be done about it?" So far as the past is concerned, comparatively little. Bygones must largely be bygones. So far as wages and salaries are concerned, the remedy must be to raise them rather than to lower the high cost of living. While some kinds of work have had excessive wages during the war, this has not been true in general, public opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. I quite agree with Mr. Gompers that the wage level should not be lowered even if it could be. On the contrary it should be raised to catch up with prices, just as was done after the Civil War. But in regard to contracts little relief for past injuries can be expected. We would best use the past as a lesson for the future. That is what I understand by "reconstruction." [Illustration: John Pierpont Morgan The banking house of Morgan was closely identified with international finance throughout the World War.]