I remember well one of my colleagues, working patiently in a laboratory, out of sight of the world and out of the stream of financial reward, enthused by science and service, who threw up his work and went into the practice of medicine. "Why?" I asked him. "Because when one of my brothers took sick and was in dire need, I who loved him could not help. I had no money, and all my monographs put together could not help him buy a meal. There is a cousin of ours, who has grown rich running a cheap moving-picture house, where the taste of the community is debauched every day. He lent my brother two thousand dollars out of his superfluities; it involved no sacrifice to him, for he purchased a third car at the same time--and yet HE is our savior. Love alone is a torture. I am going to get money." The world is built up on the sacrifices of the idealists, and eternally it crucifies them. Wealth and power are to him who has a marketable commodity, and one cannot complain when true genius becomes rich. But the genius to make money may be and often is--an exploiting type of ability, a selfishly practical industry, which neither invents nor is of great service. The men who now do the basic work in invention and scientific work in laboratories are poorly paid and only now and then honored. Every year in the United States hundreds of them leave their work in research and seek "paying jobs," to the impoverishment of the world, but to their own financial benefit. Countries where the scramble for wealth is not so keen, where the best brains do not find themselves pressed into business, produce far more science, art and literature than we do, with all our wealth. We will continue to be a second-rate nation in these regards, still looking for our great American novel and play, still seeking real singers and artists, until our idealism can withstand the pressure of our practical civilization.