Perhaps one reason why "The Great Divide," convincing enough when well acted, is a lamentable thing on the printed page is because it is an attempt to prove a theory. Moody was a Puritan, through and through, and like all modern literary Puritans he was desperately ashamed of his Puritanism. He glorified what he thought to be the pagan ideal, and in "The Great Divide" he wanted to show that the large acceptances of Ghent were nobler than the austere negations of Ruth. But paganism and Puritanism are nothing but terms, almost meaningless from much repetition, and "The Great Divide" is a play of terms, of symbols, of lay figures. And the only things that it proves are Moody's total inability to understand paganism and his reluctant but inevitable sympathy with Puritanism. It was his Puritanism that made Moody try to stimulate the conscience of his land by means of "An Ode in Time of Hesitation," his best sustained long poem, and his most passionate utterance. It was the Puritan who wrote "On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines." It was the Puritan who wrote "The Brute." And I think that it was the Puritan who wrote "Gloucester Moors." A pagan, such as Moody desired to be, would not have worried about the "souls distraught in the hold," nor would he have worried over the fact that some of the crew had over-eaten. Also, a pagan would have enjoyed the loveliness of the wild geranium and the barberry without asking: "Who has given to me this sweet, And given my brother dust to eat? And when will his wage come in?" These things are manifestations of that Puritan characteristic known as "the New England conscience"--the cause in recent years of many rather frantic efforts at social and economic and philosophical readjustment. Mr. John M. Manly says that "Gloucester Moors" is "a favorite poem with workers in the slums,"--a significant and startling observation.