Explanations of the effect of war on the suicide rate and the need to disentangle the effects of economic and political integration in the relation of the suicide rate to war are noted. Most explanations ignore economic conditions; they imply that the direct effect of a great national war on the suicide rate is a result of the war's generation of political integration and political integration's subsequent depressing of the tendency to suicide. If such explanations are correct, a great national war should, with economic conditions held constant, decrease suicide. An examination of trends in suicide rates among white U.S. adults does not show, however, that war directly decreases the suicide rate.