Here Lysis said: ‘There is still one small matter to be resolved: How are you going to get your guardians, and the first supply of young girls to train? For their men will not part with them.’ ‘That is easy,’ I said, ‘as they are Americans, and the men do not control the women.’ Lysis looked puzzled: ‘But surely the mothers control the daughters, at any rate when they are very young.’ ‘Why, no,’ I said, ‘that rarely happens either. We will invite such of the young girls as seem to us to be the best endowed by nature and to be likely to make good guardians and to be susceptible of education, no matter whether they be five or fifteen, and they will come if we convince them, whatever the parents may think. For I assure you that their parents have no power over them at all.’ ‘Really, Socrates,’ said Lysis, ‘I cannot believe that some of these great women of the Middle West do not rule their children by terror as well as their husbands.’ ‘If we find that to be so,’ I said, ‘and some of the presidents of these Women’s Clubs are indeed so overpowering that it may well prove to be the case, we can easily convince the parents by a few statistics. We will tell them that the liver corrodes and that metabolism is inhibited unless the years from fifteen to thirty-five are spent in Athens. And as that will be Science that we are telling them they will send their children to Athens. For they all honestly desire the well-being of their children, even those who are permanent presidents of their clubs.’ ‘We may take it, then, O Socrates,’ said Agathon, eagerly, ‘that the young women will be here soon.’ ‘And when they are here,’ I said, ‘they shall live in sororities as they do to-day. And I think their present sororities are a foreshadowing of their life here, and that now they do what they can, but live in a dark cave compared with the bright sunlight of their coming existence. To-day they know little Greek, three letters being the general standard, but soon they will speak and think in Greek all the time.’ ‘And when we have educated them,’ asked Lysis, ‘will it be a difficult matter for them to obtain authority to rule in America?’ ‘Well,’ said Agathon, ‘it will be easy if they have enough money.’ ‘That will be easy,’ I said, ‘for they will be trained to consider it their duty that each of them marries a millionaire.’ ‘They will find that easy,’ said Agathon, ‘for I will be careful to instruct them in the arts of courtship.’ Lysis then asked: ‘But when they have these funds at their command, what will be the quickest way for them to persuade the ordinary Americans to accept their rule?’ ‘Why,’ I said, ‘they must proclaim a Philosophy Week, for these weeks are not expensive to buy and they give you the right to worry people for seven days.’ ‘And what shall they say?’ asked Phaelon.