We had become so habituated to war and its machinery, its incidents and horrors, its demands and entailments, that when we were thrust suddenly into a new world with whose conduct and ordering we were unfamiliar we had the sensation of one who comes from long tenancy of a dark room into the glare of sunlight, the feeling of unreality of one who emerges from a delirium. The abdication of emperors, their flight and their fate distracted us for a moment; the abyss into which the Central Empires of Europe had been hurled arose before our eyes; the needs of the unfortunates in the devastated districts and of those struggling to get back to their native land made appeal to us; thoughts of future work and play occurred to us, but none of them engrossed us. Though saturated with the joy of deliverance no one gave himself over to revelling in it. Groping in darkness as we have been for so long, we blinked and gasped, trying to accustom ourselves to the divine light of the new day that had dawned, and to discern and define beauties which the new world would present. We were like a person who had suddenly been liberated from a danger that not only threatened his life but made existence insupportable. Utterance could not give such thoughts relief. Only appreciative silence could express his gratitude. In the lull or convalescence that came after the world's injury and long illness, peace terms were formulated, indemnities exacted, the map of Europe remade, and compacts formulated and signed to prevent another holocaust. Thus the greatest venture the world ever embarked upon will end. Then will come the great task--reconstruction of the world's institutions. The question that has fatigued the human mind since time immemorial, "What shall man do that he may live again?" is for the hour replaced by another more likely to be answered, "What kind of a world will the one just wrought be in which to live, and when will it be habitable?" The old world has been delivered of a promising offspring. Its travail was terrible and sanious. The accoucheur had to call to her aid the counsel and service of many nations, but the new-born world gives promise of great tidings. Grief for the old world that yielded its existence in the agony of deliverance is engulfed by the joy that has come in contemplation of the beauty, purity, and immaculateness of the new world, in which liberty shall be as free as the air in which it is suspended.