6 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



convenience for the inhabitants? We need a national stocktaking 

 to enable adequate answers to be given to these questions, but suf- 

 ficient is known to justify the attempt which is made in this report 

 to deal with them in a preliminary way. 



Re-adjustment after the War 



In addition to the question of conservation as a permanent prob- 

 lem, we have the transitory problems of re-adjustment and reorganiza- 

 tion that will have to be faced in Canada at the close of the war. In 

 Europe, these problems are only less important and grave than those 

 of the war itself; in Canada they can be made of secondary import- 

 ance if we proceed at once to work out a constructive policy of rural 

 and urban development. We will have new questions to deal with, 

 like that of reinstating the returned soldiers into the social and industrial 

 life of the community and providing for the maimed. We will also have 

 old questions which are the outcome of the defective organization 

 and unhealthy speculation that existed before the war, questions 

 which, to a large extent, have been saved from coming to a head by 

 reason of the activities and public expenditures caused by the war 

 itself. In the war we have been made to see that even military 

 strength must rest, in the final analysis, on a strong civil and econo- 

 mic foundation; how much more then must this be the case with in- 

 dustrial strength. A comparatively small number — 7 per cent — of 

 our citizens are likely to be engaged in the direct work of warfare. 

 The able bodied citizens among the other 93 per cent are assisting 

 the nation in proportion as they are engaged in the task of production, 

 or in that of preparation and organization for times of peace, or in 

 providing healthy living conditions and education for the young who 

 will form the source of human activity for the future. During the 

 war, and after, a great majority of the citizens of the country must 

 continue to live in their well-administered or mal-administered towns, 

 villages, and rural districts; must pursue their daily tasks; must wor- 

 ship their domestic gods in their palaces or slums; must see their chil- 

 dren grow in strength or in weakness, and must continue to look into 

 the future in hope or in despair. And the country will grow in wealth 

 and prosperity in proportion as the human activities of the great 

 body of the citizens are conserved and properly directed. 



Kind of Results to be Aimed at 



In Canada we seem to have suffered, not so much from lack of 

 organization as from lack of scientific methods applied to organiza- 

 tion as a means of making the most of our limited human activities. 



