I am not quarreling with the process; I am showing the thin line of difference between autocracy and democracy where necessity or passing opinion favors one course of conduct or another. Later on, when suggestions in regard to food-saving were rather freely ignored, the “suggestions” became not only suggestions but restrictions and, to quote the food administrator, “the restrictions will be voluntary, _but_ any evasion will result in compulsory enforcement.” Similarly in connection with bond-selling; the people were to lend and lend and lend because they loved their country, but (I am quoting a leading administrative organ) “the period has arrived (October, 1918) to discontinue wooing and soft-soaping. God help the man who is found with filled pockets if the war goes on because of a financial failure here.” And it was not alone in such matters where some independence or at least latitude might have been presupposed, but it extended to a press censorship and an intolerance of opposing opinion which compared rather favorably to darkest days of Russian autocracy. Although America is always naïve and “free,” its innumerable blessings of tolerance and the like prated of, still there was but one _publicly endured_ opinion in relation to the conduct of the war, and that was pro-war. Any other form of thought was rigidly put down, although in England and France one might say one’s say with all but destructive freedom. One woman in New York was actually fined for saying that “Ireland was as good as England any day!” A booklet entitled “Shall Morgan Own the Earth?” and intended to show how the war was profiting some individuals, was first investigated by the Department of Justice and pronounced immune, then later the author was urged “as a patriotic duty” to change the title; still later, even under the milder title, it was refused the privilege of the mails by the Postoffice Department and the author warned that “to circulate it would subject you to ten years in prison. You know it violates the Espionage Law.”