Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/24

 acquaintance, when a young man met tragic disaster in resisting arrest for a violation of elementary law, instantly an attempt was made to mobilize sentiment against the officer of the law. In every one of these cases the spirit exhibited was essentially anarchical. I will remind you finally of the general picture of American society, to-day presented by scores of our realistic novelists, stationed at various points of observation between the two seas; and you will recall readily enough the basis for the common charge that our national culture is not producing an admirable, or even a defensible, national type.

What the nation needs, to pull it together, many critics tell us, is a rewakening of the religious sense. Religion, they say, is the only power that can stop the movement of disintegration and initiate a movement of integration. During the administration of President Harding there began, as every one knows, a counter-revolution in politics, in morals, in religion. Hitherto, I don't think that counter-revolution has been very well managed. It has been allowed to take the form of an obscurantist reaction. The attempt to tighten up has been too much left in the hands of stony-eyed standpatters in politics and the small prehistoric element among the clergy. The recent labors, for example, of William Jennings Bryan in this field, have been those of a prehistoric clergyman. Mr. Bryan honestly sees the need of a strong binder for a nation that is falling to pieces. He honestly believes that religion is the necessary binder. He wants to put religion on its feet. How