NATION-BUILDING IN WAR TIME

During the war, strange as it may seem, while we were devoting our national energies to the work of destruction incident to war, we as a nation made astonishing progress in many ways other than in the art of war—­in what we might call nation-building.

In some ways we made progress in a year or two that under ordinary circumstances might have required a generation.  A striking illustration of this is in the development of a great fleet of merchant ships at a rate that would have been impossible before the war.  Beginning with almost nothing when the war began, we had, in less than two years, a merchant fleet larger than that of any other nation, and that in spite of the constant destruction of ships by the enemy.  The chairman of the shipping board of the United States government says that this is because the necessities of the war made the whole nation see how much it depends upon ships, and caused not only ship-builders, but also engineers and manufacturers and businessmen and the Navy department of the government, and many others, to concentrate upon this problem, with the result that we discovered methods of shipbuilding, and of loading and unloading and operating ships when they were built, that will probably enable us to maintain permanently a merchant marine, the lack of which we have deplored for many years.

In a similar way we discovered and brought into use valuable natural resources of whose existence we had largely been ignorant and for which we had been dependent upon other nations.  We made astonishing progress in scientific knowledge, and especially in the application of this knowledge to invention and to industrial enterprises.  We developed a new interest in agriculture, and learned the food values of many products that had formerly been neglected.  We were led to attack seriously the great problem of suitable housing for workmen, and had an important lesson in the relation between wholesome home-life and industrial efficiency (see Chapter X, pp. 112-113).  Foundations were laid for the adjustment of the unfortunate differences that have long existed between workmen and their employers.  The war suggested changes in our educational methods, some of which will doubtless become effective, to the great improvement of our public schools, colleges, and technical schools.

We shall study some of these things more fully in later chapters.  They are mentioned now to illustrate how our national progress was stimulated when the war forced us to see the relation of all these things to one another and to the accomplishment of our national purpose.  On the other hand, failure to recognize this national interdependence means slow progress as a national community.  When