who never come, thinking it has nothing to do with them. I'm shy and
awkward when I try to write. There seems a barrier in front of me. You
break through it. One hears your voice. Tell me," he said, "are you
getting your way? Do they answer you?"

"Yes," said Joan. "Not any great number of them, not yet. But enough to
show that I really am interesting them. It grows every week."

"Tell them that," he said. "Let them hear each other. It's the same at
a meeting. You wait ten minutes sometimes before one man will summon up
courage to put a question; but once one or two have ventured they spring
up all round you. I was wondering," he added, "if you would help me; let
me use you, now and again."

"It is what I should love," she answered. "Tell me what to do." She was
not conscious of the low, vibrating tone in which she spoke.

"I want to talk to them," he said, "about their stomachs. I want them to
see the need of concentrating upon the food problem: insisting that it
shall be solved. The other things can follow."

"There was an old Egyptian chap," he said, "a governor of one of their
provinces, thousands of years before the Pharaohs were ever heard of.
They dug up his tomb a little while ago. It bore this inscription: 'In
my time no man went hungry.' I'd rather have that carved upon my
gravestone than the boastings of all the robbers and the butchers of
history. Think what it must have meant in that land of drought and
famine: only a narrow strip of river bank where a grain of corn would
grow; and that only when old Nile was kind. If not, your nearest
supplies five hundred miles away across the desert, your only means of