His superior drew a pound can of Sir Walter Raleigh across the desk, selected a briar from a pipe rack and while he was packing in tobacco said, "Paul, do you know what day it is--and what year?" "It's Tuesday. And 1965." The bureau chief looked at his disk calendar. "Um-m-m. Today the Seven Year Plan is completed." Paul snorted. The Chief said mildly, "Successfully. For all practical purposes, the U.S.S.R. has surpassed us in gross national product." [Illustration] "That's not the way I understand it." "Then you make the mistake of believing our propaganda. That's always a mistake, believing your own propaganda. Worse than believing the other man's." "Our steel capacity is a third again as much as theirs." "Yes, and currently, what with our readjustment--remember when they used to call them _recessions_, or even earlier, _depressions_--our steel industry is operating at less than sixty per cent of capacity. The Soviets always operate at one hundred per cent of capacity. They don't have to worry about whether or not they can sell it. If they produce more steel than they immediately need, they use it to build another steel mill." The Chief shook his head. "As long ago as 1958 they began passing us, product by product. Grain, butter, and timber production, jet aircraft, space flight, and coal--" Paul leaned forward impatiently. "We put out more than three times as many cars, refrigerators, kitchen stoves, washing machines." His superior said, "That's the point. While we were putting the product of our steel mills into automobiles and automatic kitchen equipment, they did without these things and put their steel into more steel mills, more railroads, more factories. We leaned back and took it easy, sneered at their progress, talked a lot about our freedom and liberty to our allies and the neutrals and enjoyed our refrigerators and washing machines until they finally passed us." "You sound like a Tass broadcast from Moscow." "Um-m-m, I've been trying to," the Chief said. "However, that's still roughly the situation. The fact that you and I personally, and a couple of hundred million Americans, prefer our cars and such to more steel mills, and prefer our personal freedoms and liberties is beside the point. We should have done less laughing seven years ago and more thinking about today. As things stand, give them a few more years at this pace and every neutral nation in the world is going to fall into their laps." "That's putting it strong, isn't it?" "Strong?" the Chief growled disgustedly. "That's putting it mildly. Even some of our allies are beginning to waver. Eight years ago, India and China both set out to industrialize themselves. Today, China is the third industrial power of the world. Where's India, about twentieth? Ten years from now China will probably be first. I don't even allow myself to think where she'll be twenty-five years from now." "The Indians were a bunch of idealistic screwballs."