industrial situation and its probable effects on society.

"I have to acknowledge," he said, softly, "that pure material success
has completely altered its meaning for me. I'd like to use my share of
it, and what small brains I have, to help set things straight; but I'm
not so sure this generation won't have too sticky feet to drag itself
out of the swamp of its own making."

Lambert and Wandel arrived just then, talking cheerfully about football.

"What do you mean to do?" Bailly asked George as the others sat down.

George smiled at Wandel.

"I'm not sure, Driggs, that the hour hasn't struck for you."

Wandel raised his hands.

"You mean politics!"

"I used to fancy," George said, "that I'd need you for my selfish
interests. Now my idea is quite different."

He turned to Squibs.

"See here, sir. You've got to admit that the soul of the whole thing is
education. I don't mean education in the narrow sense that we know it
here or in any other university. I mean the opening of eyes to real
communal efficiency; the comprehension of the necessity of building
instead of tearing down; the birth of the desire to climb one's self
rather than to try to make stronger men descend."

Bailly's eyes sparkled.

"I don't say you're not right, George. You may be right."

A fire blazed comfortably in front of them. The chairs were deep.
Through a window the Holder tower, for all its evening lack of
definition, seemed an indestructible pointer of George's thoughts. For a
long time he talked earnestly.

"I climbed," he ended. "So others can, and less selfishly and more
usefully, if they're only told how; if they'll only really try."

"You're always right, great man," Wandel drawled, "but we mustn't forget
you climbed from fundamentals. That's education--the teaching of the
fundamentals."

"It means an equal chance for everybody," George said, "and then, by
gad, we won't have the world held back by those who refuse to take their
chance. We won't permit the congenitally unsound to set the pace for the
healthy. We'll take care of the congenitally unsound."

He turned to Bailly.

"And you and your excitable socialists have got to realize that you
can't make the world sane through makeshifts, or all at once, but with
foresight it can be done. You've raised the devil with me ever since I
was a sub-Freshman about service and the unsound and the virtue of
soiled clothing. Now raise the devil with somebody else about the virtu