This accepted and not unlofty moral code, with its extension to justice and the rights of individuals, is the force behind our idealism that has made it an international factor to be reckoned with from the days of Jeffersonian ideology to our own. Like the dissenters’ vote in England, it is a dangerous force to oppose. Despite occasional hysteria and sentimentalism, despite its frequent betrayals by an unlovely common sense, it is strong because it has the momentum of tradition and the tenacity of prejudice. Of its worth I am American enough to be convinced. Of its intelligence one cannot be so certain. But what really concerns all lovers of our hard-built civilization is how durable under stress is this moral idealism, under such stress as the approaching change in our social order is sure to bring to morals and morale, as well as to railroad stocks and the Constitution. Indeed, the inner fire, the spirit, is not easily discoverable in this American idealism with its moral causes. Historically, it is easy to explain it; habit has carried it on, and common sense must usually approve a moral investment that has been profitable; but, nevertheless, it is hard to see a continuing _raison d’être_ for such idealism in America. It seems, as I have suggested in an earlier chapter, to lack a definable spiritual basis. Its persistence, its weaknesses, its dangers, raise constantly the question as to the status of religion in America. I remember hearing Graham Wallas--who will not be suspected of bias in this matter--remark that England would not pass out of clouds and darkness until she had made for herself a new and felt interpretation of religion. America, founded by a curious partnership of the religious instinct and economic need and brought up on the moral and material profits of the union, cannot be supposed to be less in need of a fundamental spiritual readjustment. Every socialist and communist, every corporation president and ex-Secretary, every professional intellectual and amateur prophet, is declaring his mind on the one thing needful to save the world and America. I do not know why we, whose profession it is to teach, whose duty it is to interpret and to sympathize with every motion of the American mind, should hesitate to speak out also in this matter. It is, I think, demonstrable that America needs religion as much as steel and automobiles, as much as a better distribution of wealth and cheaper bread and meat.