We have this deep, internal, mother-lode of unity--in our history, our character, and our destiny. We are awkward in approaching it, because in the past generation we have falsified our history and corrupted our character; the men now in training camps grew up between the Treaty of Versailles and the crash of 1929; they lived in the atmosphere of normalcy and debunking; of the Ku Klux Klan and Bolshevism; of boom and charity; and it is not surprising that they were, at first, bewildered by the sudden demands on their patriotism. _Losing a Generation_ We have to look into those twenty years before we can create an effective national unity; what we find there is a disaster--but facing it is a tonic to the nerves. What happened was this: for the first time since the Civil War, progressivism--our basic habit of mind--disappeared from effective politics. The moral fervor of the Abolitionists, the agrarian anger of the Populists, the evangelical fervor of William J. Bryan, the impulsive almost boyish Square Deal of Theodore Roosevelt, the studious reformism of Woodrow Wilson, all form a continuity of political idealism; from 1856 to 1920 a party, usually out of office, was bringing the fervor and passion of moral righteousness into politics. The passion was defeated, but the political value of fighting for morally desirable ends remained high; and in the end the wildest demands of the "anarchists" and enemies of the Republic were satisfied by Congresses under Roosevelt and Wilson and Taft. This constant battle for progressive principles is one of the most significant elements in American life--and we have unduly neglected it. James Bryce once wrote that there was no basic difference in the philosophy of Democrats and Republicans, and thousands of teachers have repeated it to millions of children; intellectuals have neglected politics because the corruption of local battles has left little to choose between the Vare machine in Philadelphia, the Kelly in Chicago, the Long in Louisiana. For many years, in the general rise of our national wealth, politics seemed relatively unimportant and "vulgar"; and the figure of the idealist and social reformer was always ludicrous, because the reformers almost always came from the land, from the midwest, from the heart of America, not from its centers of financial power and social graces. So constant--and so critical--is the continuity of reformist politics in America, that the break, in 1920, becomes an event of extreme significance--a symptom to be watched, analysed and compared. Why did America suddenly break with its progressive tradition--and what was the result?