The war is over. The soldiers are coming home. On all
sides we are assured that the problem of the returned
soldier is the gravest of our national concerns.

So I may say it without fear of contradiction,--since
everybody else has seen it,--that, up to the present
time, the returned soldier is a disappointment. He is
not turning out as he ought. According to all the
professors of psychology he was to come back bloodthirsty
and brutalised, soaked in militarism and talking only of
slaughter. In fact, a widespread movement had sprung up,
warmly supported by the business men of the cities, to
put him on the land. It was thought that central Nevada
or northern Idaho would do nicely for him. At the same
time an agitation had been started among the farmers,
with the slogan "Back to the city," the idea being that
farm life was so rough that it was not fair to ask the
returned soldier to share it.

All these anticipations turn out to be quite groundless.

The first returned soldier of whom I had direct knowledge
was my nephew Tom. When he came back, after two years in
the trenches, we asked him to dine with us. "Now, remember,"
I said to my wife, "Tom will be a very different being
from what he was when he went away. He left us as little
more than a school boy, only in his first year at college;
in fact, a mere child. You remember how he used to bore
us with baseball talk and that sort of thing. And how