vidently he was touched.

"Yes, I know, I know," the old scientist continued in an outburst of
sincerity. "I know that in spite of all the arguments and the maze of
special cases in which people lose themselves, the absolute, simple
truth remains, that the law by which some are born rich and others poor
and which maintains a chronic inequality in society is a supreme
injustice. It rests on no better basis than the law that once created
races of slaves. I know patriotism has become a narrow offensive
sentiment which as long as it lives will maintain war and exhaust the
world. I know that neither work nor material and moral prosperity, nor
the noble refinements of progress, nor the wonders of art, need
competition inspired by hate. In fact, I know that, on the contrary,
these things are destroyed by arms. I know that the map of a country
is composed of conventional lines and different names, that our innate
love of self leads us closer to those that are like-minded than to
those who belong to the same geographical group, and we are more truly
compatriots of those who understand and love us and who are on the
level of our own souls, or who suffer the same slavery than of those
whom we meet on the street. The national groups, the units of the
modern world, are what they are, to be sure. The love we have for our
native land would be good and praiseworthy if it did not degenerate, as
we see it does everywhere, into vanity, the spirit of predominance,
acquisitiveness, hate, envy, nationalism, and militarism. The
monstrous distortion of the patriotic sentiment, which is increasing,
is killing off humanity. Mankind is committing suicide, and our age is
an agony."

The two men had the same vision and said simultaneously:

"A cancer, a cancer!"

The older scientist grew animated, succumbing to the evidence.

"I know as well as you do that posterity will judge severely those who
have made a fetich of the institutions of oppression and have
cultivated and spread the ideas supporting them. I know that the cure
for an abuse does not begin until we refuse to submit to the cult that
consecrates it. And I, who have devoted myself for half a century to
the great discoveries that have changed the face of the world, I know
that in introducing an innovation one encounters the hostility of
everything that is.

"I know it is a vice to spend years and centuries saying of progress,
'I should like it, but I do not want it.' Bu