Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/85

 nerves became too frayed to stand the strain any longer he went to Madame Leota. He found peace as he sat and talked to her.

"You, too, are a doctor," he said. "When I am with you I seem to grow strong again."

"Why don't you go off to the mountains for a rest?" she asked. "A couple of months out West or up in the Black Hills would do you a world of good."

"I'd miss the kids too much," he said. "And what is worse they'd miss me. Gosh! if you could see the poverty of some of those babies, you'd be amazed. Many of them come in nothing but skin and bone, almost dead from malnutrition. Not even a few cents in the family to buy milk. What is wrong with this country when children are allowed to starve while pet dogs live on chicken and go about in carriages? There's something rotten somewhere in our economic structure. A country that cannot keep its children from starving isn't fit to be classed among the great nations of the world."

"But isn't that true of all countries?" she asked.

"Yes," he said bitterly, "it is. And it is due to the fact that people the world over are selfish. Few there are who are interested in the welfare of their fellow man. As long as their fat paunches are filled, what matter if all their neighbors starve? There is more than enough food in existence to feed every person in the world. The fault lies in the mode of food distribution. In China thousands upon thousands die of starvation every year. Their sufferings are more hideous than anything Poe ever devised. Readers of the world notice cabled references to them in their papers and are not disturbed. In India conditions in some parts are not much better. There are thousands of natives who never had a full meal since they were born. And in America lap-dogs are nursed by smirking women and given every luxury."

"After all," she reflected, "it is sad but there is nothing you can do about it. Styles change, new inventions are discovered, men are born and die. Still as the generations succeed one another there is no real progress. The world doesn't move. Even after you have crumbled back into dust, China's poor will be