Was it fortuitous, as in the example of Mr. Spingarn, that Mr. Van Wyck Brooks should have held a certain leadership, should have put far more than most of his generation his impress upon American taste and thought in literary matters? It would seem that he has been a leader _faute de mieux_, for although a charming minor critic, he has never managed to awake an indomitable desire among his followers to master the odds. He voiced the sentiments of a wistfully rebellious generation but shed no light on the object of their rebellion, the achievement in a democracy of real individuality. That is the problem Mr. H. L. Mencken has at least perceived, and his bold tone better fits a leader in our present straits than Mr. Brooks’s gentle accents, but alas! He “solved” the problem of being an individual in a “democratic” nation simply by striking an attitude of swagger, and like Midas he is cursed with a touch that changes all objects into some one thing else. It is easy--and this is the secret of his influence--to adopt Mr. Mencken’s attitude toward the current affairs of men. Let me quote his _Catechism_ and you will have it in one simple lesson. “_Q._ If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here? _A._ Why do men go to zoos?” But let us observe the man in the zoo, traipsing open-mouthed and superciliously from cage to cage, grinning in silly patronage at the imprisoned beasts who at least are true to the laws of their being, and shall we not mock at man’s cheap sense of superiority based not on what he (poor lunatic!) has done for himself but only on what Nature has made of him? No, no, it is not by contempt for the inferior that man will grow but by dissatisfaction with himself. The net effect of Mr. Mencken’s writings, however, is to produce self-satisfaction and a feeling of false superiority, and this naturally enough makes for personal passivity. As for the Mencken touch! It turns everything to horse sense (not to be confused with the hard-won virtue of commonsense) and it is admirable when it is applied to current cant, as this: “Law Enforcement becomes the new state religion. A law is something that A wants and can hornswoggle B, C, D, E and F into giving him--by bribery, by lying, by bluff and bluster, by making faces. G and H are therefore bound to yield it respect--nay, to worship it. It is something sacred. To question it is to sin against the Holy Ghost.”