“So you see,” his tone changed once more, “they are well worth a thought or two.”
“Yes,” agreed Curlie, “I’ve thought of them now and then myself. And I—I’ve sort of admired them.”
“Admired them?” The musician shot him a quick glance. “Why?”
“Their courage, and all that. Don’t you know? Doing things in a different way. Putting down tyrants. Starting a government where everything is owned by the people.”
“There’s something to be said for them.” Fritz Lieber’s tone was thoughtful. “They were ruled by tyrants. There is no getting around that. They were slaves. They had a right to revolt. But now—now they have gone too far.
“How would you like to live in a land that denied the very existence of God?” He wheeled about to face the boy.
“Why I—”
Fritz Lieber held up a hand for silence. “In a land where the authority of the Divine Master is denied, where ‘home’ and ‘mother’ are words that have no meaning, where the government is doing its best to destroy home life, where a little girl is not allowed to play with dolls because she may want later to have a home and children to call her mother!”
“I wouldn’t like that!” Curlie thought of his own home and his own mother.
“The present powers that be in Russia, as far as anyone can find out,” the musician went on soberly, “wish in time to raise all children in nurseries, as we do chickens in incubators, to destroy most that has long been held sacred by the nations of the civilized world. I know, for I have looked deeply into these matters. I have a friend in the United States Secret Service.