umanity needs men in control of state and
national affairs who would hold the interests of humanity sacred.
Engineers are such men. Not that engineers more than any other
professional men are sprouting wings--not that. But engineers do see
things in their true light--cannot see them in any other light than the
one imposed by the law of mathematics, which is that two and two make
four, never five or three--and this involuntarily would admit of
decisions and grant graces from the point of view of absolute truth,
which is, of course, the point of view of humanity--the greatest good
for the greatest number. With such men occupying high places in the
nation's affairs, the world of men and mankind would leap forward
ethically and spiritually at a pace in keeping with the pace at which
civilization has progressed under the impetus of engineering thought
since the days of Watt. Nobody can deny _that_ progress. Nobody could
well deny the fact that ethical progress under engineering guidance
would be equally great.

I hold a brief for engineers, of course. Engineering has been my major
work for twenty years and more. It has been my privilege to associate
intimately with two men--yea, three--possessed of great engineering
ability. The third man failed of great repute, owing chiefly to his
advanced--rather too much advanced--visionings. He wanted to talk across
the ocean by telephone at a time when the cable interests successfully
prevented him from commercializing his apparatus. And he died a
disappointed inventor. But he had the stuff in him, the thing that makes
for human greatness, just as had the other and more successful two men
with whom I as a designer was privileged to work. All were men of kindly
spirit, of broad outlook, of unselfish devotion to worldly interests.
Each was a humanitarian. Each saw things as they are, and each saw
things as they should be, and each thought much on problems of human
welfare and betterment. Of such men in civic affairs the nation, and
indeed the entire world of nations, has had but a sad too few in the
past. It is to be hoped, and it is the belief of the writer, that
engineers will become more plentiful in civic life in the future.

I have always believed that the man who reached an advanced age without
a sizable bank-account is a fact which would well serve as a definition
as to what constitutes an idealist. There are many such men--meaning, of
course, men having a level set of brains, an