Peace and prosperity produce a peculiar type of conservatism. People are then relatively free in action and expression, things are going well with them, and they are instinctively inclined to let well enough alone. Thus in thought they tend to a conservative inertia. On the other hand, in periods of great strain and suffering, as in war time, thought is stimulated, all ordinary views are broken down and the most radical notions are widely disseminated and even taken for granted by those who, shortly before, would have been scandalized by them. Action and certain phases of free speech are, in such a period, much more widely restrained by authority. There is a swift and strong development of social control, urged by necessity. Thus, in war time, there is the curious paradox of ever widening radicalism in thought, with constantly decreasing freedom in action and expression. When the discrepancy becomes too great, you have the explosion--Revolution. This cause hastened and made more extreme the Russian Revolution, which had been simmering for a century. It has not yet appeared in Germany because of the forty years of successful work in drilling the mind of the German people to march in goose-step; yet the increasing signs of questioning the infallibility of the existing regime and system in Germany give evidence that there, too, the conflict is at work. With ourselves, the opposition appears, as yet, only in minor degree. Nevertheless, it is here. On the one hand, are the registration, conscription and espionage measures, the effort to control news, the governmental supervision of food supplies, transportation, production and corporation earnings, the war taxes. On the other hand, thought is so stimulated that everything is questioned: our political system, our social institutions--marriage, the family, education. As some one says, "Nothing is radical now." We probably shall escape a sudden revolution, but the conflict must produce profound readjustment in every aspect of our life; for thought and action must come measurably together, since they are related as soul and body. There are singular eddies in the main current both ways. For instance, the exigencies and sufferings of war produce a reaction toward narrower, orthodox forms of religion and a harsher spirit of nationalism; while in fields of action apart from the struggle, freedom and even license may increase, as in sex-relations. Nevertheless these cross-currents, while they may obscure, do not alter the main tendencies, which move swiftly and increasingly toward the essential conflict.