The girl blushed. She obviously had not been in the country long enough to expect this question. Suddenly she looked more child than woman. With an embarrassed flutter of hands she said, “Oh, I sink Sweden,” and a pall fell over the table. Everyone looked uncomfortable. “Oh,” said the man in a flat, disappointed tone, and the conversation turned to potato prices. People in middle America always ask that question. When you grow up in America you are inculcated from the earliest age with the belief—no, the understanding—that America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth because God
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