When in war-time we read of the duke's son and the cook's son peeling potatoes into the same tub, we regard this aspect of the working of conscription as something in itself fine and admirable, a real national comradeship in common tasks at last. Colonel Roosevelt orates; our picture papers give us photographs; the country thrills to this note of democracy. But when we learn that for the constructive purposes of peace--for street-cleaning--the Soviet Government has introduced precisely this method and compelled the sons of Grand Dukes to shovel snow beside common workmen, the same papers give the picture as an example of the intolerable tyranny of socialism, as a warning of what may happen in England if the revolutionists are listened to. That for years that very thing _had_ been happening in England for the purposes of war, that we were extremely proud of it, and had lauded it as wholesome discipline and a thing which made conscription fine and democratic, is something that we are unable even to perceive, so strong and yet so subtle are the unconscious factors of opinion. This peculiar psychological twist explains, of course, several things: why we are all socialists for the purposes of war, and why socialism can then give results which nothing else could give; why we cannot apply the same methods successfully to peace; and why the economic miracles possible in war are not possible in peace. And the outcome is that forces, originally social and unifying, are at present factors only of disruption and destruction, not merely internationally, but, as we shall see presently, nationally as well.