Freedom was
on its way, even if slowly. Justice must triumph ultimately, as it
always triumphed. Rusty keys would at last be turned in the locks which
had kept from Alaskans all the riches and resources of their country,
and these men were determined to go on building against odds that they
might be better prepared for that freedom of human endeavor when
it came.
In these days, when the fires of achievement needed to be encouraged,
and not smothered, neither Alan nor Carl Lomen emphasized the menace of
gigantic financial interests like that controlled by John
Graham--interests fighting to do away with the best friend Alaska ever
had, the Biological Survey, and backing with all their power the ruinous
legislation to put Alaska in the control of a group of five men that an
aggrandizement even more deadly than a suffocating policy of
conservation might be more easily accomplished. Instead, they spread the
optimism of men possessed of inextinguishable faith. The blackest days
were gone. Rifts were breaking in the clouds. Intelligence was creeping
through, like rays of sunshine. The end of Alaska's serfdom was near at
hand. So they preached, and knew they were preaching truth, for what
remained of Alaska's men after years of hopelessness and distress were
fighting men. And the women who had remained with them were the mothers
and wives of a new nation in the making.
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