"So bad as that?"
"Oh, it may not prove to be so very bad a thing. The sun is still shining. The forces that have produced all the good there ever has been in the world are still at work. It is just possible that in the new world at least the unrest and turmoil that have been troubling us are but the first movements of a change for which we have been preparing with words if not with actions."
"I do not understand."
"We have been calling the new world a crucible in which all nationalists have been thrown to produce the true American or the true Canadian. Have you ever watched a crucible and noticed what takes place in it?"
"I once saw a copper crucible in British Columbia and a silver crucible in Massachusetts and iron crucibles here and there, but I never studied them carefully."
"Well, the only crucible I ever saw was the little one, made by the blacksmith, that I used for running bullets when a boy. I used to get big wads of tea lead from the grocer and melt it in the little crucible. When the heat got to the lead it would sink down to a pool at the bottom. The top would be covered with gray scum and blazing scraps of paper. Then I would pour the bright, clean metal into the bullet moulds. When it was all poured there would be left behind the gray scum from the top and some slag at the bottom. And I am thinking that when the good metal of nationality is ready to be poured we will leave behind the scum of parasites at the top and the slag of agitators at the bottom."
"That sounds good, but when will it happen?"
"It may happen this year and it may not happen for a hundred years but of one thing I am sure, and that is that there is plenty of good metal in our crucible."
Whereupon my private Mahatma knocked the ashes from his pipe and walked home across the fields through the glowing sunshine that he loved.