Another thing to be noticed about the Monument is the fact that it reaches high but it is founded deeply. From just beneath its aluminum cap the ground seems very far away. From the base its apex seems to be pushing itself through the clouds and piercing the sky beyond them. It is a connecting link between earth and sky, between the common and the lofty, between the practical and the ideal. Two people fail to get more than half the meaning and the joy of life. One is the star-gazer, so enraptured with his visions that he is blind to life’s practical realities. The other is the extreme realist, so fearful of the fanciful that he will not lift his eyes from the mud at his feet and take a look at the glories which hover about the hill of vision. The American viewpoint is represented by neither alone. It is represented, rather, by a combination of both. As the Monument stands with its feet firmly planted in the clay, but with its top among the stars, the national spirit is best typified by the man who keeps his plans firmly fixed among practical things, but who also keeps his thinking at the high level of splendid dreams, worthy ideals, and inspiring visions. We have achieved such marvelous progress as a nation largely because we have busied ourselves with real things. We have taken hold of things and conditions as we found them, and have made the best of them. We have been the better able to do so, however, because we have not forgotten the things of the unseen world about us. Our dealing with practical things has been blessed by the treasuring of spiritual ideals and the following of worthy dreams. Our place as a nation is largely the result of this union of hope and thing, this combination of dream and realization, this blending of the ideal and the practical. The Post-War Outlook for Literature (1919) The true writer is a sort of social seismograph, sensitive to every change that takes place in the life of the race. Literature is, therefore, the record in which is told the story of social movements, the mirror which reflects the history of the ages. The peace and strife, the faith and unfaith, the love and the malice of all the past lives in the literature which it has produced. The great war was preceded by a period of fermenting stagnation. It was a period of suppressed restlessness and hidden fears. The little eruptions on the surface of its seemingly placid literature bespoke the deeper feelings and hidden gropings of the time. At length the pent-up fury of things burst into a volcano of war. The war produced a literature of its own. It ran like a golden thread through the vast mass of ordinary war propaganda. Most of the propaganda was of mere brain origin, but the real literature of the war was born in the depths of the tried souls of men.