The surface reason for the fading of pride on our literary scene is obvious enough. Pride used to be considered not only the most immoral but also the most dramatic quality of human life. But recently life, or our imaginative way with life, has assumed a non-dramatic air. The interminable series of the falls of proud heroes and princes, historical or legendary, that runs through the bulk of the world’s literature--well, this series seems now to have terminated. Democracy’s interest in such personages is lackadaisical. I heard a bright American undergraduate refer to them as “those old guys that used to get bumped off quick.” And one must bear in mind that America, if still a bright undergraduate, is widely representative of modern civilisation. Yesterday a remote collection of insignificant states, she is now becoming an international state of mind and, more significantly, of imagination. In this state of imagination the old proud-falling potentate cuts a small figure. Recently, to be sure, many princes have fallen, in fact the majority of them; but they have fallen softly. The downfall of a business corporation is far more noisy and generally disturbing; but a corporation is impersonal and undramatic. As for pride, doubtless some American presidents have shown promising tragic signs of it, but of course these had to be nipped in the bud. A prince, even so powerful and autocratic a prince as the American president, cannot fall proudly and dramatically when he has to fall regularly every four years. Pride is not popular with democracy either as a vice or as a virtue. Even a just pride in oneself is publicly regarded as not justifiable. Self-esteem must be submerged in party loyalty; and party loyalty, in turn, must whitewash its rising arrogance with humanitarian sentiment, with eloquent devotion to the welfare of men in general. To be sure, intelligent persons dislike the blatancy of this sentiment. Most of them nevertheless are actually in accord with the very heart of it. They wince and shrug at the slogan trumpet of “Service to Mankind,” but they quietly salute the flag. They bow in spirit to the reigning standard of “Social Value.” Tacitly accepting it as prime motive they deprecate their own self-esteem. They abet the general feeling that pride as the ruler of this world, good and evil pride alike, has modernly been deposed: it is a thing of the past.