Piegan Pines By WALTER PRICHARD EATON SHALL be one with these pines Some happy day. Dwarfed by the wind and molded by the snow, They burst pink cones In a meadow starred with violets. No sound they hear But the mountain wind, The bird-like chirp of the ground squirrels, Across the grass, The far, soft thunder of outleaping streams That glide like silver hair down dripping cliffs The hair of Mélisande grown white with peace. And heard their breeze-borne thunder; I saw the sun Blush on the glaciers while the world was dark, Nod in the rising breeze; I drank from brooks of melting snow, And said good morning to a deer. I shall be one with these pines Some happy day. "R.WEIR CROUCH CERT A General Staff for Peace By GLENN FRANK ERTAIN our American publicists ERTAIN of our American publicists are rendering a distinct service by their investigation and discussion of the consideration that the problems of afterthe-war reconstruction are receiving at the hands of the several European governments. With a constructive foresight expressed in organized action these governments, at the very time when war is most loudly hammering at their doors with its. demands, have set elaborate corps of experts and executives at work on the job of charting the future and drawing up a blue print of policy and action that will be a national necessity on the day after peace is declared. In all this carefully planned preparation for the future which is going on "above the battle" throughout Europe there lies a direct challenge to the political and business leadership of the United States. One cannot make even a long-distance investigation by excursions into the reconstruction bibliography of Europe, which already contains thousands of books, pamphlets, and reports, without appreciating afresh the urgent necessity for like action on our part, for a coördinated and comprehensive approach by our Government to the collection and organization of the facts, and a plotting out of the policies that we must have well in hand by the time the war ends if we are to deal in confident wisdom with the deferred problems of our domestic life, and effectively discharge the new responsibilities of our international relations. In many quarters just now there is an impatience, not lacking justification, with any proposal that does not relate directly. to the effective prosecution of the war. When the foundation of our house is being undermined is of course no time for the complacent discussion of interior decorations. For all their importance in nor mal times, there are many rights and causes which must now adjourn their claim upon the nation's attention until the urgent business of war is concluded. The scattered energies of the nation must be knit and kept knit into a forceful unity. A ruthless concentration must rule out the wasting even of thought on non-essentials. But a concentration that found no time for a systematic study in advance of the social, economic, and political problems that we shall abruptly face when the war stops would defeat itself. There is such a thing as the treason of misguided emphasis. The democracies of the world have been learning in a costly school what it means to become warring nations when unprepared for war; they must see to it that when the war ends they shall not be peaceful nations unprepared for peace. We As a people we have never quite acquired the habit of preparing well in advance for even the most predictable demands of the future. We are in many ways a nation of improvisers. Our social and political thinking is too often done under the spell of the immediate. wait until a crisis is upon us, and then hastily provide some expedient which we permit to crystallize into a tradition that becomes an obstacle to consistent progress. But democracy must in self-defense learn to anticipate and to discount crises. Social and political policies must not be created. overnight in the heat and hurry of a critical situation. They must be got ready before the crisis develops. The wastefulness of the trial-and-error process must be minimized by a public mind that can think of two things at once, especially when those two things are interdependent and equally vital. And nowhere does this principle apply with greater force than to the necessity for our giving sustained attention to after the-war problems even while most immersed in during-the-war problems. The problems of war and the problems of peace are not joined cleanly like flagstones or bits in a mosaic; they overlap; they blend. They must therefore be dealt with abreast, not tandem. When peace is declared, the United States will be confronted with many serious domestic problems. To name only a few: the demobilization of the army; the demobilization of war industries, and the adaptation of their plants to peace-time production; the industrial dislocation that will be involved in the disbandment of troops and workers from munitions factories and trades that have been directly dependent upon war orders; the extensive unemployment that may, in the absence of sound policy and adequate organization, attend the shifting of the productive process of the nation from a war basis to a peace basis; the re-education and placing of crippled and semi-disabled soldiers; the finding the via media of practicable justice between the factors that will then operate to reduce wages and the factors that will operate to raise them; the greater entrance of women into industry; the necessity for an agreement between labor and capital upon the problem of increased. output, and upon the administrative control and of distribution of the increased profits resulting from scientific management and other methods of increasing output; the challenge involved in the factors that will then operate toward a lowering of the American standard of living; the question of the control of prices; the problem of the coöperative movement among farmers, small producers, and consumers; the whole land question, its taxation, the increasing of both the extent and intensity of cultivation, the broadening of the base of ownership, the checking of tendencies toward great estates, and related issues; the discontinuance or retention and development of the governmental control of transportation, natural resources, and raw materials that the necessity of war may have induced; the readjustment of our educational system to meet the new demands of a new time; and the underlying problem of striking a just balance of judgment and legislation between necessary emergency measures and fundamental solutions, so that in the end we may be the beneficiaries of a boldly conceived and statesmanlike reconstruction instead of a temporizing patchwork of palliatives. It is important to remember that political leadership will be in a less favored position for dealing with these problems of reconstruction than it now enjoys in dealing with the problems of war. In war-time the necessity for presenting a solid front to the enemy drives diversity of opinion to cover and gives constituted authority a measurably clear field for action, except for sporadic flurries of criticism. In wartime the issues admit of relative simplification. There are not the usual complications of party and class interests. Particularist claims are postponed in deference to the supreme issue of the emergency. Speaking in the large, there is in wartime one clear road to a goal. But all that will change overnight when peace comes. Pent-up differences of opinion will be released. The embargo on partizanship will be lifted. The forces of reaction will again gravitate toward a common center in defense of common interests. Radicalism's right to criticize will be zestfully resumed. There will not be the unity of opinion about the goal of national effort that obtained during the war. There will be even less unity of opinion about the roads leading to the goal. Issues will be so numerous and complicated that political leadership will find it difficult to mold public opinion by occasional speeches as in war-time. And above all, the difficulties and dangers will be at our very door; there will be no allies to hold the line while we are getting ready to act. All this argues for a carefully thoughtout plan that will meet the inevitable demands that will follow hard on the heels of the war. We may well take counsel of the European nations that have already created their agencies for studying the problem and organizing to meet the situation when it arises. As far back as early in 1916, Mr. Asquith, then premier of England, publicly stated the necessity for such studies and preparation, and suited the action to the word by placing the problem in the hands of a reconstruction committee composed almost entirely of members of the Asquith cabinet, whose hands were already overfull of war duties. Whether this particular committee made much headway or not, Mr. Asquith placed a stroke of real statesmanship to his credit when he outlined the problem and suggested the making of a "peace book" for England that should contain the results of extensive research and counsel reduced to a detailed scheme of action to be taken by Parliament, by the cabinet, by the several departments of government, and by each of the local authorities upon the declaration of peace, in order to deal with such difficulties as could be reasonably forecast. A second reconstruction committee was appointed by Mr. Lloyd George when he succeeded Mr. Asquith as premier. The Lloyd George committee was composed chiefly, if not wholly, of men outside the cabinet. Last summer a later development in the situation placed the work under the direction of a minister of reconstruction without portfolio. The post was accorded to Dr. Christopher Addison, an intimate associate and counselor of Lloyd George. The work of this ministry of reconstruction has been highly organized into subcommittees, each with its own secretary and staff of experts. These subcommittees are dealing in minutest detail with the problems of labor, finance, industry, transportation, agriculture, education, health, housing, taxation, raw materials, etc., in short all of the complicated demands that the end of the war will throw on the study - table of Parliament and counting-room for decision and action. France, Italy, and Japan are likewise looking to the future. Details of their plans are not essential here, since this is an argument for action rather than a narrative for information. Now and then a peep through the almost "news-proof curtain" that Germany has dropped be tween herself and the rest of the world shows far-reaching reconstruction plans under way within the Central powers. Last August, Germany created a ministry of economics charged with certain wellconceived preparations for after the war. The problem of physical reconstruction will be neither so extensive nor so pressing with us as with France and Germany, for instance; but we shall face a difficult and important time, nevertheless. And what is most important of all, the end of the war will give us the chance to do many unprecedented things that will set us forward for a generation in political and social organization if we are ready to act while the flush of the creative moment is on, while the spirit of readjustment is still in the air, and before the old social inertia and our every-day spirit take possession of us once more. The public mind will be highly sensitive to suggestion after the war, because the issues will touch so vitally the personal future and fortune of every American that men and women will have a keener concern in public policies than ever before. Unless our leadership has a sound basis of advance preparation, it may find itself helpless to save the public mind from being captured by catchwords, ruled by snap judgments, and rifled by special interests. The actual form which any organized approach to the problem of reconstruction on the part of our Government should take must of course be determined in the light of a hundred and one considerations that do not lie open to those outside the administration. It is easy to be a volunteer president, with a nicely charted scheme of what should be done; but the charted scheme must be checked against the sense of discretion, the knowledge of limitations, and the appreciation of needs. that no one can have save those in the position to know all of the facts. It might prove feasible to create a national commission on reconstruction, with subsidiary commissions in each of the States. The national commission on reconstruction clearly should be under the guidance of some man not exclusively identified in his interests or known point of view with either labor or capital. He should be a man not too scarred from political battles, a man of liberal outlook and undoubted fairness. of mind, a man with a synthetic grasp of the varied interests. that combine to make the American problem, a man with enough of the scholar in his make-up to enable him to be the correlating factor and suggestive inspiration of the group he would draw about him in plotting out the program of research and organization, and a man with enough of the executive in him to make the job move with all promptness consistent with thoroughness. The national commission on reconstruction would of course have primary concern with the distinctly national problems, while the subsidiary state commissions would deal primarily with local problems. The forty-eight state commissions would, however, be integral parts of the whole machinery of research and would serve as the working instruments of the national commission in the collection of data and the analysis of conditions that in each of the States relate to interstate and national interests. The forty-eight state commissions could analyze as far as possible the conditions. likely to confront their respective States at the end of the war, visualize the factors that will be involved in shifting the business and industry of the State from a war basis to a peace basis, and draw up a program of the steps the State will probably find it essential and wise to take upon the declaration of peace in order to reduce to a minimum the difficulties of readjust ment and to insure the largest possible returns of profit and progress in the period after the war. The findings of these state commissions might be published in the form of a peace book for each State, documents that would comprise an outline of the problems to be faced and the program to be followed by the business, industry, and government of each State. The national commission on reconstruction would be the agency that would correlate the findings of all the state commissions, in addition to the original research and formulation of policies that would constitute its primary duty. The results of such a national survey might be submitted to the nation, therefore, in the forty-eight state peace books and one American peace book, the latter as the product of the national commission. Of course the state peace books would deal not so much with questions of policy as with the problems of administration that will be locally urgent. The American peace book would be the document that would enable the nation to see its problem and see it whole. In the event that practical considerations of time or difficulties of administration should make so comprehensive a scheme not feasible, the desired ends might be reached by attaching to each of the departments of Government-labor, agriculture, commerce, treasury, interior, war, and navy-a commissioner of reconstruction to conduct studies with the aid of experts and under the direction of the cabinet secretaries. Supplementary to or in the absence of any such definite approach by the Government, there are unlimited possibilities for effective non-official work. The American Federation of Labor might well create a system of central and subsidiary commissions on reconstruction. Local labor organizations could, with the aid of sympathetic experts, make a study of the probable conditions that will confront labor in their communities at the end of the war, and could draw up the program of action that it may prove wise to take, together with a statement of the legislation they may see fit to demand. Out of such work could come labor's peace book for each industry, each section of the country, and each locality. Correlating the conclusions and data of all these subsidiary commissions and giving them con |