There comes constantly the question as to how all this initiative which
has been so titanic is to be reconciled with the general good--a world-
wide and insistent problem, which will be more serious there when the
neighborliness is not so intimate. But the new neighborly element will be
found, we must believe, as an element has been found for the strengthening
of steel.
I was told by a chemist, when visiting the mills in Pittsburgh, that every
steelmaker knows that a little titanium mixed with the molten iron after
its boiling in air multiplies its tensile strength immeasurably, though no
one knows just why it is so. Perhaps, in the plans for the new cities of
Pittsburgh and Chicago, we have sign of the social titanium that will
increase the tensile strength of democracy in the places where the stress
and strain are greatest.
But my concern just now is that the reader shall see how the valley first
explored by the French has given and is giving bread to the world, and has
postponed the dread augury of the Malthusian doctrine; how the larger
valley of the explorers of the lens and crucible, Lavoisier and Berthelot,
is opening into infinite distances; and how the under valley, when
breathed upon by the air, has given its wealth to the over valley--and
through this all to realize that France's geographical descendants are out
of those three valleys evoking, making, a new world.
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