The real contribution, what we have learned as to the positive virtues, is harder to describe and impossible to measure, but the lessons are worth looking for and may be learned from the letters and from the lips of our men. Perhaps I can best indicate what the men themselves regard as vital by telling the experience of a friend who started one of the customary practical talks before an audience of our men behind the lines in France. His homily didn't seem to be "getting across" and he was inspired to ascertain just what to their minds were the most serious offenses. He asked each man to write down what he regarded as the three very worst faults against which a soldier should be on his guard. When the answers were collected, one word appeared on practically every slip of paper, _cowardice_; the second was not so nearly unanimous, but appears on a strong majority of the papers, _selfishness_; and the third was evidently _conceitedness_, though the defect was worded in different ways, as _big head_, _crust_, and the like. In other words, the virtues which the soldier most admires and regarding which he had evidently learned the most valuable lessons, are courage, unselfishness or coöperativeness, and modesty. The record of our soldiers has proved beyond a doubt that once you get men into groups with a common and a worth-while purpose, courage--both the reckless courage that comes by instinct and that higher type, the courage of the man who recognizes his danger--can no longer be assumed to be a rare virtue. It is a very common virtue. Cowardice is infinitely rarer. The citations and the casualty records, for instance, have completely rehabilitated the Jew as a fighting man, and the faithful need no longer go back to Josephus for their war legends. Not all the courage and fortitude was shown on the field of battle. We must not forget that last fall we suffered from by far the most serious epidemic in the history of America, and, in the dark days in our training camps, opportunities were offered, and gladly accepted, for a display of heroism and devotion of the highest type. In the realm of fortitude, if not of physical courage, the war certainly tapped new sources of determination and provided a kind of stimulus which would keep a man to whom no personal glory or conspicuousness could possibly come, some poor devil sentenced to a swivel chair, laboring in that same chair day and night for the purpose of making some single improvement in nut or bolt, or perhaps filing card. Given the impetus of a great common purpose, our possibilities for industry are limitless.