Lasting readjustment can only take place upon the sure foundation of scientific understanding. Numerous international misconceptions must be corrected before permanent peace can be established on earth as it is in heaven. For instance, the supposition that commerce is war has largely dominated prevalent reasoning on economic questions. A subsidiary fallacy is the belief that states instead of individuals trade with each other. There has, in fact, arisen a sort of trade strategy aping the military, by which one state seeks to circumvent another and force its wares upon it, willynilly, as though manufactured goods and raw materials were evil things, like bombs and shrapnel, with which to overcome a supposititious enemy. This war school of economics forgets that trade is an exchange of goods, or good things, and is therefore not a military adventure but a mutually beneficial expression of the law of supply and demand. Commerce cannot flourish on hostilities. Permanent peace will come when international relations of all kinds are based upon Principle, which Christian Science teaches mankind to recognize as divine Love.

Similarly, what is called the labor problem is complicated by the prevalent notion that labor and capital can be separated into warring camps. Every laborer is in some measure a capitalist and every capitalist a laborer. Capital is only saved-up labor, and labor the method of producing capital. The inequalities and injustices which obtain in the apportionment of pay and profits are often glaring, but they cannot be corrected by war. When this is attempted there ensues an unscientific, selfish struggle between those who at a given time seem to be the "haves" and the "have nots." Economically, the culprit is special privilege, not capital which every laborer is doing his best to acquire; metaphysically considered, the struggle is not between capital and labor but between mankind and its own sense of limitation, as in an athletic game the struggle is not really between the seeming contestants but between those contestants and the laws of physical limitation which they are overcoming. There is no ready-made material remedy for what is called the labor problem any more than there is for what are called disparities in foreign trade. In normal peace times individuals belonging to different nations know best what goods they desire to exchange, and their mutual interests are subserved by giving them freedom to do right by each other. These problems are fundamentally mental and spiritual and must be worked out by spiritual Science in an atmosphere of liberty. In the last analysis, Christ Jesus in feeding the five thousand and finding his tax money in the fish's mouth showed the scientific way by which humanity must eventually learn to feed itself and pay for its common expenses.

On page 353 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy tells the story of a workman in her brother's mills whom a practical joker set to pouring "a bucket of water every ten minutes on the regulator." When her brother heard of it he made the joker pay the workman. Mrs. Eddy draws the following homely moral: "Some people try to tend folks, as if they should steer the regulator of mankind. God makes us pay for tending the action that He adjusts."

In the necessary financial and industrial readjustments which are to follow the war, there must be room for expansion. Whatever trade or labor restrictions may be temporarily introduced among men and nations during the period of reconstruction, genuine universal prosperity can only come through setting men free. There need be no sudden reversal from enforced economies into wild extravagance. Lessons learned in the war cannot be lost, but narrow doctrines of state supremacy must not prevent individual enterpriese from penetrating into undeveloped countries and causing the desert to blossom as the rose. Especially is there much room below the equator, under the Southern Cross, for great expansion of settlement and enterprise. The war has brought some notable lines of transportation into being. The desert between Egypt and Palestine has been spanned by the rails, thus linking the "Cape to Cairo" enterprise with Europe. The Panama Canal, finished before the war, is ready for business on a great scale; transcontinental Canadian railroads span the great North. The Bagdad railroad under right control will unite East and West, to the profit of all mankind. The Trans-Australian railroad is completed, and a Trans-Saharan railroad awaits final survey. The tropics can be salubrious and habitable for energetic white races; moreover they contain highlands such as Rhodesia, where self-governing communities can flourish under conditions similar to those in the temperate zones.

The great war has produced a world consciousness in places where provincialism formerly ruled. Enterprising individuals should be given elbow room; financiers who are willing to take risks in experimenting and do not demand special privileges have a place in national economy; costly failures may follow investments, and saved-up labor, or capital, should have its reward as well as present-day labor. Business development brings a closer contact between all quarters of the globe. Soldiers and sailors of the different nations who have never known each other before have become fast friends; they may see each other's idiosyncrasies as well as virtues, but the exchange of ideas through such friendships produces a mental broadening; fear and distrust vanish, and cooperative brotherhood becomes possible.

A powerful readjustment is going on the world over, which concerns bodies politic and the bodies of men. Christian Science is lifting thought to the perception of the one God as the omnipotent Father and all-compassionate Mother; it is establishing harmonious relationships, bringing human affairs under divine order, settling differences, exacting reparation, instituting true forgiveness, preparing the way for God's peace. On page 321 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy says: "My heart is filled with joy, that each receding year sees the steady gain of Truth's idea in Christian Science; that each recurring year witnesses the balanceadjusted more on the side of God, the supremacy of Spirit; as shown by the triumphs of Truth over error, of health over sickness, of Life over death, and of Soul over sense." The national and international readjustments now being provided for are but after effects of mental and spiritual readjustments which the power of God is pressing upon humanity. They are outward evidences of triumphs within, of noble self-sacrifices, of rearrangements of thought, of unconditional surrenders exacted from evil beliefs, and of victorious conquests made by new and right ideas. To-day the world can rejoice with all Christian Scientists that a great settling of accounts is going on whereby man's indebtedness to God had become more apparent than ever and the future is seen to be bright with His promise.

William D. McCrackan.