"But then religion is a favorite theme of the novelist. Winston Churchill's 'The Inside of the Cup' indicated that social service would take the place of religion. Well, maybe it would for some people. But nowadays most people need a religion that says that there is a hereafter.
"I think that I am the only human being in captivity who has read all of Holt's book on the cosmic relations. And what I got out of it was not a belief in spiritualism, but a realization of the fact that every one, high and low, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, has a craving for knowledge of life after death, has a craving for belief in life after death. And the war has raised this feeling to the nth power. We feel that we shall go mad if there is no hereafter. Mr. Wells leads us to believe that he will find that there is a hereafter. President Wilson shows us that he is sure there is one.
"This craving for conviction of the hereafter, increased by the war, inevitably makes our literature more spiritual. So we are seeing the last for awhile of the sex novel and of sordid realism. We no longer find people who believe that since you are an artist you should describe the contents of a garbage can. The soul of man as well as the body of man is coming into its own as the theme of the novelist.
"And the war is responsible. You can't stick out your tongue and make a face at God when a shell may momentarily hurl you from the earth. And who cares to read a sex novel now? What do the little bedroom scandals of the flimsy novels matter when the womanhood of Belgium has been despoiled?
"I am asked if our writers have deteriorated of late years. I think that the rank and file of our serial writers are way below those of forty or fifty years ago. Then our novelists were fewer and better. Look at the files of the old magazines and you will find that the novels that appeared serially in those days were much better than those that are appearing to-day. But one or two of our best novelists are just as fine as any of our writers of a bygone generation—Margaret Deland and Gertrude Atherton, for instance.
"And in other branches of literature I think we have improved on our forefathers. American poets have never before done such exquisite things as they are doing to-day, and one or two short story writers are doing better things than were ever done before in this country. If you compare the short stories in old issues of the magazines with those in the current issues you will find that the old short stories are as much inferior to the new short stories as the old novels—the serialized novels—are superior to the new ones."
A Field
Sometime I expect to turn a sharp corner and come face to face with myself, according to the ancient maxim, "extremes meet." For, did I not vow to the Four Great Walls that had imprisoned me for nine months, that I would fly to the uttermost parts of the earth so soon as vacation should open the doors? And did I not spend almost my entire summer within sight of my home, and in a field of a few acres dimension?