smiled at the
little man.

"You're catching it pretty heavy, Garvin; how do you feel?"

The little man made an attempt to smile and act as if the whole matter
were so ridiculous as to be beneath notice. But Amory was not through.

"The theory that people are fit to govern themselves rests on this man.
If he can be educated to think clearly, concisely, and logically,
freed of his habit of taking refuge in platitudes and prejudices and
sentimentalisms, then I'm a militant Socialist. If he can't, then I
don't think it matters much what happens to man or his systems, now or
hereafter."

"I am both interested and amused," said the big man. "You are very
young."

"Which may only mean that I have neither been corrupted nor made timid
by contemporary experience. I possess the most valuable experience, the
experience of the race, for in spite of going to college I've managed to
pick up a good education."

"You talk glibly."

"It's not all rubbish," cried Amory passionately. "This is the first
time in my life I've argued Socialism. It's the only panacea I know. I'm
restless. My whole generation is restless. I'm sick of a system where
the richest man gets the most beautiful girl if he wants her, where
the artist without an income has to sell his talents to a button
manufacturer. Even if I had no talents I'd not be content to work ten
years, condemned either to celibacy or a furtive indulgence, to give
some man's son an automobile."

"But, if you're not sure--"

"That doesn't matter," exclaimed Amory. "My position couldn't be worse.
A social revolution might land me on top. Of course I'm selfish. It
seems to me I've been a fish out of water in too many outworn systems.
I was probably one of the two dozen men in my class at college who got
a decent education; still they'd let any well-tutored flathead play
football and _I_ was ineligible, because some silly old men thought we
should _all_ profit by conic sections. I loathed the army. I loathed
business. I'm in love with change and I've killed my conscience--"

"So you'll go along crying that we must go faster."

"That, at least, is true," Amory insisted. "Reform won't catch up to
the needs of civilization unless it's made to. A laissez-faire policy is
like spoiling a child by saying he'll turn out all right in the end. He
will--if he's made to."

"But you don't believe all this Socialist patter you talk."

"I don't know. Until I talked to you I hadn't thought serio