"Just as the long western field of Italy fitted her to be a unifying world power." She confessed, "I've since found the same idea expanded charmingly by Fairgrieve. Phoenicia and Israel were important because they were on the way connecting the Nile to the twin rivers----" "The earth's hand is in it all. Great cities follow the rivers, or the newer streams of iron we call railroads; civilizations grow where differing cultures touch, as at the meeting of Asia, Europe, and Africa. Think what its location--sea-walled and sea-warmed--has made of the island miles of England!... Mountains breed freedom-lovers; my mountain made me." "My thanks to it! It has stirred up trouble----" "Yes." He continued slowly, "All we have been through in Adamsville--that was only the mountain speaking through its human mouthpieces. Our country's first democracy was squabbling competition; then came selfish cooperation, for the few on top: trusts and monopolies. The hill's rich heart expresses that in the mining companies ... in my father. But it gives enough worth to the plain man to allow him to unite with his fellows, and mold this destructive selfishness into saner brotherhood, wider cooperation--the labor movement, groping after democracy; I and the others are the mountain speaking in that. It is the prime mover, the hero and the villain, shifting us about at its will to express all that lies hidden in its rich interior." "We must make it join the local.... I hope it favors suffrage." "Joyful joker!" "I like what you say about the vastness of America," she repeated. "More than vastness. It has the proper balance of material that yields not too easily, so that an Egyptian race of slaves must follow; nor with such difficulty that it must remain like the backward Eskimos. Its men and women will be self-sure, mentally able to build democracy in industry, in government, in everything. What a world, when we grow up to our words--when classes blend into one class of worthy men and women----" "Supermen?" "Another way of saying it.... When exploitation is ended, when we produce for need and not profit, when a man's highest selfishness will be to serve all, not pile up a backyard hoard of gold. Call it socialism or what you please, it will come; it is self-planted by and in our soil. The mountain will win, in the long run, not for its despoiler, but for all of its red-handed, ore-stained children. Work will be distributed, life lengthened, wealth and joy evened----" "A big program cut out for Mr. Pelham Judson!"