You may wonder why I took so much trouble to gather one uninteresting young man into the fold of Uncle Sam’s army, when we had so many subordinate workers at that business. But I had known the boy’s father twenty years before, and something he had said influenced _me_ towards a decision that enlightened my whole after life. When that boy returns he will be no longer sallow-faced, and he will be a hero--not a clerk. I like to pay my debts. LETTER XXX THE VIRUS OF DISRUPTION _February 16, 1918._ “FREEDOM with self-restraint and social responsibility” would be a good motto for Americans in the years that are before them. The underground and overground propaganda of Bolshevism, Anarchism, etc., inspired and fed by the forces of destruction, can be successfully combated by the spirit of order, of restraint, of responsibility to the body politic. The end of this war will not be the end of confusion. The world-soul has been inoculated with the virus of disruption, and it will need the wills of millions working together for a common end to expel the poison and restore the body of humanity to health and security. America as we know it was born of protest against oppression, and the love of liberty, father and mother, positive and negative, in the old days. If now the protest against oppression degenerates into the protest against all restraint, and if the love of liberty degenerates into the love of license, then I may tell you that those who cannot govern themselves have to be governed from outside. The human race is passing through a period of initiation. The morally weak and the weak of will are always in danger of being carried away. The spirit of destruction finds them ready tools with which to work its will. The kingdom of heaven is not immediately at hand, and full seven years will be needed to _settle the consciousness_ of mankind after the shaking-up it has received. The dregs, as usual in such cases, have risen and diffused themselves throughout the fluid of the cup. If there were only a dozen people in the United States who understood or could be made to understand the _occult forces_ behind the present universal unrest, and if those twelve could work together with unity of purpose, some here, some there, with the pen, the voice and the will, under a leader, those twelve might lead the people out of the wilderness. But where are they? Every leader knows that in unity is strength. And I may mention the opposite law, that in disunity is disintegration.