The trends in Philosophy and Theology were alike profoundly affected by the wartime spirit. In no single year of the past have these two departments of thought made such progress in their efforts to get down where men live and to deal with the problems which are real to people as they have made during either of the past two years. As a result, they are more intelligible, more helpful, and more widely adapted for vital use. Imaginary problems and arbitrary arguments have been largely laid aside. The literature of these least tangible subjects has come to deal with them in the most tangible way. It considers more and more the problems of everyday life and work. There has been sown into the literature of the various nations a certain moral and spiritual element which is very indicative of the trend of human thought and desire. An unusual number of dramas, for instance, are dealing with moral and spiritual themes and principles. The situations with which the war brought men face to face caused some of life’s great questions to demand an answer. People who had long put those questions aside came to face them squarely. Out of our late experience, probably most people came with some intelligible attitude toward the supreme questions related to living and dying. Neither are we any longer afraid to face them either in books or upon the stage. The literature of the new age may not be reflective, but it will be vital. The prophet of truth never faced such an opportunity as now. Free Verse (1921) We generally think of free verse as being a modern literary creation. Such is not really the case. That form of free verse which is now most in vogue, namely the form commonly called polyphonic verse, may be a comparatively new thing. At least it has been commonly familiar only during the last few years. The fundamental form of which it is but a variation is quite an old one. Walt Whitman was a writer of a form of free verse in a literary generation now vanished. His “Blades of Grass” was the most unconventional thing done either in his period or those prior to it. This verse varies from our polyphonic prose of the present time, yet the spirit and general form are much the same. Whitman’s work awakened an abundance of discussion and criticism in his day. It survives because he had a message, and compared with the message of a poem, its form is only an incidental thing. The blank verse forms, which are as venerable as they are familiar in our literature, are variations of the same general poetic pattern. As a rule, the most conservative of us are fond of holding up Shakespeare as a literary model for the centuries. We seem to have been about right in our estimate of him too, for his work certainly has evidenced a remarkable measure of immortality.