But I do not mean that this greater realization of community is confined to women. How often in the past we have heard a man say complacently, “Well, I suppose I must do my duty and go to the polls and vote to-morrow,” or “I must show myself at that rally to-night.” But a nobler idea than this is now filling the minds of many men. They go to their civic club not because it is their duty, but because just there working together with their fellows for the furtherance of their common aims, they find their greatest satisfaction. In neighborhood groups men can find that self-realization which becomes by the most wonderful miracle life can offer us community realization. That is, I can learn through my neighborhood group that I am the city, I am the nation, and that fatal transference of responsibility to an invisible and non-existent “they” can be blotted out forever. When neighborhood organization begins to teach that there is no “they,” that it is always we, we, we, that mothers are responsible and fathers are responsible, and young men are responsible, and young women are responsible, for their city and their nation, it will begin to teach its chief lesson. Do I thrill with the passion of service, of joyful, voluntary surrender to a mighty cause as I sail for France to serve the great ends of the Allies? Social and political organization are fatally at fault if they cannot give me the same elation as I go to my Neighborhood Centre and know that there too the world has vital need of me, there too am I not only pouring myself out in world service, but that I am, just in so far, creating, actually building, a new and fairer world. This is the finest word that can be said for neighborhood organization, for my finding my place through my response to every daily need of my nearest group. For the great word I believe on this subject is not that I _serve_ my neighborhood, my city, my nation, but that by this service I _become_ my neighborhood, my city, my nation. Surely at this hour in our history we can realize this as never before. The soul of America is being born to-day. The war is binding together class and class, alien and American, men and women. We rejoice that we are alive at this moment, but the keenness of my joy is not because I can serve America but because I am America. I save food in my home not in order that my family income can meet the strain of the higher prices, not because I can thereby help to send more food to the Allies, but because I, saving the food of America for the Allies and the world, am performing America’s task, _am_ therefore America. This is the deeper thought of neighborhood organization: that through performing my humblest duties I am creating the soul of this great democracy. * * * * *