Compare this scene with the peaks above, still ice-bound, with spring hardly come as yet, so that residence at that elevation was not to be encouraged. Compare it with the city down below: a city of wide, well-swept, tree-edged streets, of big houses and wide open spaces, green already. Down there was a different scene, throbbing with life, though from the heights above it appeared to be slumbering; with busy cars clanging their way and motor-cars dashing hither and thither. Seen from the heights above it presented a whitish blotch, picked out by red roofs here and there, and by dark streaks which represented the roads. It appeared to be a gigantic gridiron, for every block of houses was square, and the roads intersected one another at right angles.
Out beyond it see the glimmer from a vast expanse of water—a lake—the first glimpse of which astounded and delighted the eyes of Brigham Young and those pioneers who, forsaking the East, fought their way across the prairie to discover a new land, and, peeping downward at the sight we are presenting to our reader, imagined they had gained a fertile country—a country flowing with milk and honey. Fertile indeed it looks from the mountains: trees by the thousand stretch out on every hand, casting a delightful shade, and farther afield green patches of vast extent hug the lake and stretch away into the open country, with brown squares here and there, on which fruit farms abound, and where dairy-men work for their living. But hasten to the lake, dip a hand in it, and taste the water. It is brine. For down there is a huge salt lake, which gives its name to the city. Down below there is Utah, which, for all its salt lake and its salt desert, has been termed "God's own country".
Ten miles away perhaps, beyond the smoke of the city, yet surrounded in the smoke and dust which it itself creates, lies a copper-mine of world-wide notoriety. Rails run hither and thither; tubs and trucks clank over them; while the mountain side, which the active hands of man and the never-ceasing grinding of machinery is eating away at a rapid pace, presents a series of steps, as it were, along which other rails are laid, where locomotives grunt, where trucks screech their way past the wide openings which give admission to the centre of the mountain.
"And that is you, Jim," said one young fellow as he dropped out of a passing truck and accosted another; "just coming off, eh? Then let's walk home together. It takes longer, I know, for we could ride in the trucks down to the bottom of the mountain; but a walk's a walk; it does one good at this hour in the morning."
"Sure," the other answered, with that drawl common to men of his country. "While we walk we can talk about the situation. What'll you do, eh? I've been itching this two years past to be up and away. Of course I know that some people must work, for copper's needed, and so are thousands of other articles, but——"
"But," said Dan, looking sharply round at him—"but for us young chaps the time's come for fighting."
They trudged on down the rocky slope along which the rails ran, descending gradually and by an easy grade to the bottom, and thence to the smelting plant, where the ore was crushed and treated. They walked between the rails which carried, every day and all day and night too, long lines of trucks, heavily laden, needing no locomotive to carry them to their destination, they stepped aside now and again at some siding to pass another train, this time of empty trucks being dragged up by a smoking engine, and for a while they did not exchange another word. For their thoughts, like the thoughts of everyone in America at that moment, whether East or West, North or South, were filled to overflowing.
Armageddon, the world war which had broken out with such irresistible violence and so unexpectedly—at least unexpectedly to Americans—in the year 1914, had progressed through long weary months to this eventful year of 1917. Tales of tragedy had reached America; thousands of men had heard or read of atrocities committed by the Germans in Belgium, and had ground their teeth and become almost violent. Still more thousands of men had taken a firm grip of themselves and had looked at the situation as dispassionately as was possible.
"No! Not yet—not yet," they had told themselves. "America loves peace; we are a democratic nation, all men, from the President downwards, are equal—as good the one as the other; we wish no harm to anyone in the world; we desire only to work, to thrive, to live surrounded by freedom and justice, only——"