One such woman,[1] who had long been identified with the care of delinquent children and had worked for many years towards the establishment of a Children’s Court, had asked me many questions concerning the psychopathic clinic in the Juvenile Court in Chicago, comparing it to the brilliant work accomplished in her own city through the coöperation of the university faculty. The Imperial government itself had recently recognized the value of this work and at the outbreak of the war was rapidly developing a system through which the defective child might be discovered early in his school career, and might not only be saved from delinquency but such restricted abilities as he possessed be trained for the most effective use. “Through all these years,” she said, “I had grown accustomed to the fact that the government was deeply concerned in the welfare of the least promising child. I had felt my own efforts so identified with it that I had unconsciously come to regard the government as an agency for nurturing human life and had apparently forgotten its more primitive functions. [1] The following conversation is a composite made from several talks held with each of two women representing both sides of the conflict. Their opinions and observations are merged into one because in so many particulars they were either identical or overlapping. Both women called themselves patriots, but each had become convinced of the folly of war. “I was proud of the fact that my son held a state position as professor of Industrial Chemistry in the University, because I knew that the research in his department would ultimately tend to alleviate the harshness of factory conditions, and to make for the well-being of the working classes in whose children I had become so interested. “When my son’s regiment was mobilized and sent to the front I think that it never occurred to me, any more than it did to him, to question his duty. His professional training made him a valuable member of the Aviation Corps, and when, in those first weeks of high patriotism his letters reported successful scouting or even devastating raids, I felt only a solemn satisfaction. But gradually through the months, when always more of the people’s food supply and constantly more men were taken by the government for its military purposes, when I saw the state institutions for defectives closed, the schools abridged or dismissed, women and children put to work in factories under hours and conditions which had been legally prohibited years before, when the very governmental officials who had been so concerned for the welfare of the helpless were bent only upon the destruction of the enemy at whatever cost to their fellow-citizens, the State itself gradually became for me an alien and hostile thing.