Both Sara and he did love humanity. Whether either of them loved a single individual human being was less certain.

Eugene did not come out of the comic papers. He was neither dirty-necked nor bellowing, nor had he any especial tropism for soapboxes. He was neat and quiet-voiced; he smiled affectionately; and he was, to the world of Fred Cornplow — to the world of Franklin and Emerson and Mark Twain, of Willa Cather and William Allen White — as dangerous as a rattlesnake.

There is a vulgar error about rattlesnakes. Hordes of sensible people assume that it is treacherous in a rattlesnake to bite the tourists, but to himself a rattlesnake is an honest, kind-hearted family man who believes that human beings treacherously kill a lot more rattlesnakes than snakes kill humans.

Eugene was telling Fred about the Youth Movement.

‘It’s not purely a communist doctrine. We’re willing to make a United Front with the liberals and even lukewarm socialists. I’ve just been out at a Youth Convention in Cincinnati. We’re demanding of Congress . . .’

‘Demanding?’

‘Certainly! Demanding that all young people up to twenty-five — oh, I’m a year beyond that limit, so it’s not personal — be granted college educations with all expenses paid, free cigarettes, free movies twice a week, and jobs at union wages guaranteed after college.’

Fred was gulping, but Sara stopped him with, ‘Now, Dad, please don’t tell us again how you waited on table at college, and then went to work at seven dollars a week.’

It was Hazel who, surprisingly, led the attack: ‘I never could quite understand the Youth Movement. I know; so many of the boys and girls are having a dreadful time getting started, nowadays. But is it any harder on them when they can’t find a job than it is on a man of forty-five, with a sick wife and three children?’

‘That’s scarcely an answer,’ condescended Eugene, while inwardly Fred began to rage that, ‘Doggone it, this Silga fellow acts like he owned the house. Pretty soon he’ll give us lessons in how to drive a car, if we’ll just pay strict attention.’

‘That’s scarcely an answer. Naturally, I believe in guaranteeing work, with a maximum week’s labour of thirty hours and a minimum wage of fifty dollars, for all workers, whether they are twenty-five or sixty-five. But our chief concern is with Youth, because it has a chance to be educated: it isn’t blinded by the American myth that this is a democracy and that everybody still has a chance.’

While Fred tried to look relaxed and impartial, and did look as relaxed and impartial as a cat on flypaper, Eugene informed him that all automobile workers’ wages could easily be doubled if the manufacturers would get rid of the middleman (such as Fred Cornplow); that it was a good thought that Great Britain would soon lose India and Egypt, France lose Indo–China, and Holland lose Java; that it was an even better thought that during the first three months of the Next War, Russia would take over Alaska, western Canada, China, Scandinavia and Poland, and make their inhabitants as joyous as the Russian peasants. So, by easy stages, they came to Spain, where, everyone said, there would be a dangerous right revolution before long.