In America we are still too distant from the bitter consequences of war to feel the need of planning for the care of the crippled and nervously injured soldiers. Imagination will not allow us to picture the returning of the soldiers as a problem. Our remarkable success in getting the soldiers back into industry after the Civil War gives us a strong sense of security when we do consider the matter. Probably if the war continues for several years our problem after this war will be more serious than it was in 1865. In any case we shall have a considerable number of those who, because of physical or nervous injuries, will require public assistance of a constructive character. If such men can be made fully or even partly self-supporting by being placed on land it will help both them and the food productiveness of the nation. Of course, this form of public aid, like every other method of giving assistance, has its political and economic dangers. The prosperity of other farmers must not be disturbed. So many interests are involved that the entire problem demands time for serious discussion, so that we may not be troubled by hasty, half-baked legislation. Anyone who has visited an army cantonment has felt the gregarious atmosphere of army service. For a few men this is the most trying experience connected with the service. Others find in it the supreme satisfaction. Every soldier is influenced by it more or less. What will it mean to the soldier who has come into the army from the small country place? We know, as a result of what social workers among the soldiers tell us, that the country boy is often very sensitive to this enormous change from an isolated rural neighborhood to the closest contact possible in a community which is literally a great city. By necessity the recruits from the country are forced into the conditions of city life, into an environment that is more gregarious than any normal urban center experiences. What result is this likely to have upon the future social needs of the men from rural districts? It is to be expected that many of them will not be content again in the country. They will have developed cravings that the country-life environment cannot satisfy. For this reason it is not likely that the placing of former soldiers and sailors on the land will have in any country all the success desired. Much will depend upon who are selected to go into the country. On the other hand, it is safe to predict that this war will add momentum to the city-drift of our population and increase the number of those who form the mobile class of rural laborers. FOOTNOTE: [12] _International Review of Agricultural Economics_, August, 1917. End of Project Gutenberg's Rural Problems of Today, by Ernest R. Groves