erce or Christianity. Here is another, in the
lonely seas around the pole, where the ghostly ice-mountains go drifting
through the gray mists, patiently wrestling with the awful powers of
nature, to snatch its secret from the hoary deep, and bring it home in
triumph. Hard fisted, big boned, tough brained, and stout hearted,
scared at nothing, beaten back by no resistance, baffled, for long, by
no obstacle, this race works as though the world were only one vast
workshop, and they wanted all the tools and all the materials, and were
anxious to monopolize the work of the world.

They are workers primarily, makers, producers, builders. Labor is their
appointed business as a people. Sometimes they have to fight, when fools
stand in their way, or traitors oppose their endeavors. They have had to
do, indeed, their fair share of fighting. Things go so awry in this
world that a patient worker is often called to drop his tools, square
himself, and knock down some idiot who insists on bothering him. And
this race of ours has therefore often, patient as it is, flamed out into
occasional leonine wrath. It really does not like fighting. That
performance interferes with its proper business. It takes to the
ploughshare more kindly than to the sabre, and likes to manage a steam
engine better than a six-gun battery. But if imbeciles and scoundrels
will get in its way, and will mar its pet labors, then, heaven help
them! The patient blood blazes into lava, fire, the big muscles strain
over the black cannon, the brawny arm guides the fire-belching tower of
iron on the sea, and, when these people do fight, they fight, like the
Titans when they warred with Jove, with a roar that shakes the spheres.
They go at that as they do at everything. They fight to clear this
confusion up, to settle it once for all, so it will _stay_ settled, that
they may go to their work again in peace. Fond of a clean job, they
insist on making a clean job of their fighting, if they have to fight at
all.

'But, after all, this race of ours is selfish,' you say. 'It works only
for itself, and you are making something grand and heroic out of that.
If it civilizes, it civilizes for itself. If it builds cities, drains
marshes, redeems jungles, explores rivers, builds railroads, and prints
newspapers, it is doing all for its own pocket.' Well, we say, why not?
Is the laborer not worthy of his hire? Do you expect a patient, toiling
people to conquer a waste continent here