"Should I?" Andy asked musingly. "Can there be an obligation of service to one's country without one's country assuming some obligation in return? And does one's country assume any obligation toward such men as me? If it does I don't know what it consists of. The man with nothing but his hands has few rights and no privileges. What does the casual worker, the completely propertyless man receive from his country that he should gladly cross the seas to die for it on foreign soil? Can you tell me? I don't think you can. In that sense one doesn't mean one's country geographically. These mountains we call ours will stand unchanged, the forests will grow, the rivers run to the sea, the salmon go up to the spawning grounds, the birds will mate and sing, whether we win or the Germans, or if both sides fight to the last man and the two races expire. So that really one's country means Bill Jones and Sam Smith and Jack Robinson--human society--the national unit. If Sam Smith, by skilful exercise of the acquisitive instinct, acquires ownership of the hills and the forest, and permits me and Bill Jones and Jack Robinson to work for him whenever he can profitably use our labor, and has no responsibility for our welfare at such times as he can't employ and pay us wages, why should we shoot and kill, and be ourselves shot and killed in defense of his hills and forests? "That," Andy went on in his low, deliberate voice, "is one way of looking at it, one way of putting it. I'm what they call a common worker. So far as I know, my people have never been anything else but workers, tied to a job because they knew nothing else. I've never had anything but a job myself. I've dug up quite a lot of assorted facts and a variety of knowledge out of books between hours on the job. I've done quite a bit of thinking about what I've seen, and heard and read. Every dollar I've ever had, the food I've eaten, the clothes on my back--since I was nine years old I've earned 'em all by sweat and aching flesh. By way of illustration I'll cite the fact--with no personal reflection, you understand--that the Norquay estate employed last year on its timber operations upward of three hundred men. The net profits for the year run over two hundred thousand dollars. That's what your country means to you. But that means nothing to me. I have only myself, my energy, the strength of my arms and a certain skill to sell. And you don't employ me because I'm hungry or need clothes, or because I'm ambitious to better my condition. Oh, no. You don't recognize me as having the slightest claim on you for subsistence. You will only hire me at a wage where my labor can be transformed into cash at a profit to yourself. In slack times I can starve. It doesn't make any difference to you. That attitude and practice is typical of the industrial system of every civilized nation. I present you with the case of the intelligent worker, when he analyzes his situation in and relation to