The variety is so great, the invocation of emergency so ready that one must ask whether the term is not becoming shorn of meaning--a shibboleth for the legitimization of ordinarily suspect governmental action desired by influential groups. Shibboleth or not, the individual citizen, as we shall see subsequently, finds that its incantation is associated with increasing constrictions upon his freedom of action. CHAPTER IV EMERGENCY POWERS OVER PERSONS Constitutional democracies as well as authoritarian states are confronted in time of military crisis with the need for a maximum productive and military effort directed at national survival. Totalitarian nations in their practice of total absorption of the materials and energies of conquered nations, and the Western democracies in their insistence upon “unconditional surrender” have contributed to the transformation of modern war from a struggle for limited objectives to a struggle for survival. The initial response of Great Britain in the First World War indicated an assumption that war imposed upon a nation the necessity to adapt the machinery of the government, and especially its military arm, to the attainment of victory. Twentieth century wars, like those of the Nineteenth century, were to be fought by the military. In terms of the total national energies, war represented a temporary, localized diversion. Democracies continue to manifest a not necessarily unhealthy predisposition, even in the atomic age, to treat war as a subsidiary effort which should not unduly ripple the accustomed habits and interests of the major segment of the population and economy. War is fought by governments, not by peoples. True, perhaps, in regard to police actions which constitute occasional escape valves for aggressive energies which might otherwise erupt in world war, this aphorism which is maintained as a fiction in time of major war, is a residue of an earlier and simpler age. However tentative their initial response to World War II, the Western democracies soon came to regard it as imposing the need not simply to adapt governmental structure to the major purpose of victory, but to maintain consistency between the political and economic activities of individuals and this overriding goal. Exercising a frankly coercive power, governments in the Second World War conscripted the energies of individuals. Great Britain imposed a labor draft as well as a military draft. The United States, resisting nationwide demands for conscription of labor, satisfied itself with commanding the military services of individuals. Both countries identified individuals whom, it seemed, could best be integrated in the war effort by being integrated _out_ of it--_i.e._, potential saboteurs, espionage agents, and the like. However adequate or inadequate the techniques for measuring individual and group loyalty, the measurement was undertaken and thousands found themselves immobilized behind barbed wires.