ame.
Right there's the difference between our service and this forest service.
That's where they're democrats and we're fossils. Look at the difference
in the spirit of the ranger and the spirit of the soldier! And it's not
because they're whipped into line and bullied and snarled at. It's
because they're treated like men--and made to feel they're a needed part
of a big whole. You should hear Fred tell of the way men meet in this
forest service--superintendent meeting ranger on a common ground. And
why? Because they're doing something constructive. Because the work's the
thing that counts. You'll see what it's done for Fred. The boy has a real
dignity; not the stiff-necked kind he'd acquire around an army post, but
the dignity that comes with the consciousness of being, not in the
service, but of service."

He fell silent there, and Katie watched him. He had never spoken to her
that way before--she had not dreamed he felt like that; heretofore it
had been only through laughing little jibes at the army she had had any
inkling of his feeling toward it. That she had not taken seriously; half
the people she knew in the service jibed at it to others in the service.
This depth of feeling disturbed her, moved her to defense. After a
moment's consideration she emerged triumphant with the Panama canal.

He shook his head. "When you consider the percentage of the army so
engaged, you can't feel as happy about it as you'd like to. We ought all
to be digging Panama canals!"

"Heavens, Wayne--we don't need them."

"Plenty of things we do need."

"Well I don't think you're fair to the army, Wayne. You're not looking
into it--deeply enough. You're doing just as much as Fred, for in
safeguarding the country you permit this constructive work to go on. As
to our formalities--they have run off into absurdity at some points, but
it was a real spirit created those very forms."

"True. And now the spirit's dead and the form's left--and what's so
absurd as a form that rattles dead bones?"

"Father didn't feel as you do, Wayne."

"He had no cause to. He was needed. But we don't need the army on the
frontier now. That's _done_. And we do need the forest service--the
thing to build up. There's no use harking back to traditions. The world
moves on too fast for that. Question is--not what did you do
yesterday--but what good are you to-day--what are you worth to-morrow?
Oh, I'm not condemning the army half so much as I'm sympathizing with