"Just as we, in America, blind ourselves with the dream of liberty and equality that Washington and Lincoln had," Roger interposed so quietly that his inference was lost for a moment in the echo of Dr. Stetson's sweeping assertions. The doctor himself was the first to catch it, and turning to Roger with a look as if he were diagnosing an unexpected symptom said, with the same smug assurance with which Hilary Wainwright regretted the slow coming of the Average Man's ability to think:
"No, I don't think the cases are parallel. At least I, personally, am old fashioned enough to believe we have liberty and equality for all."
"You're right." James Mitchell threw out his narrow shoulders and glared at Roger. "Liberty and equality! There's too much of them now, allowing every dirty foreigner and crack-brained native to stir up any fool that will listen. Let me tell you," and James Mitchell cut the heart of the problem from the air before him with his knife, "if there isn't a little less 'liberty and equality' pretty soon, this country's going to be in the same rotten mess as Russia. The people are half asleep. If I didn't know that down at bottom, the great middle class of America is really sane——"
"——we might get somewhere," Roger spoke almost sadly, so that Belle and Dr. Stetson looked toward him, puzzled; but Anne, her face flushing, looked down. "It's the great, sane, middle class that's holding back liberty—killing it. The rich, to a certain extent, have it. The poor are struggling for it. It's only in the middle that they're dead, and safe. The middle class. There is no middle class, really. It is the dividing class. It's the blow-neither-hot-nor-cold. It's the lackey-souled. It's the misfortune of any country that has it, this great, sane, safe, middle class."
"From your point of view, whatever that is, it may be. Not from mine." Dr. Stetson now spoke in crisp, sharp tones; like tiny glittering knives they seemed to pare the emotion from Roger's words. "The lackey-souled are, on the whole, the clean bodied. Your struggling poor, battling for so-called liberty, are unfit, humanly below par. They can't function efficiently as humans where they are, much less direct matters. Perhaps you don't know the number of mental defectives there are in this country. The draft records showed a tremendous proportion of men with the mental capacity of children. They work at trades requiring little skill, they marry and raise others like themselves. It's ridiculous to talk about increasing the liberty of these people. It ought to be restricted, anyhow redirected. At the other end of the scale, we have, of course, the effect of over-license, but, it may surprise you to know that in school tests taken through all classes, it was the children of the rich who, on the whole, averaged highest."
"It doesn't surprise me at all," Roger said quietly, while Hilda fidgeted and made little clucking noises, as if trying to swallow the too large portions of mental food offered by Dr. Stetson. "It's exactly what I would expect under the present system."
"Which system is the result of these conditions, not the other way round. The upper class, using it in a broad sense as the directors of the world, are there because they are most fit."
"Exactly," James Mitchell interpolated like a stinging wasp. "Look at the directors of any corporation, quiet, clean, sharp-eyed men. Look at the soap-boxers, the I. W. W.'s, the union organizers—all shifty-looking, as if they'd never had enough baths or enough to eat."
"Maybe they haven't," Roger said slowly, while Anne's face flamed and with difficulty she kept back the tears.
Why did Roger persist? What did it matter anyhow who was right or who wrong, at this first real Christmas of her mother's?