But we, as upholders of the Arts, the Moralist having been pretty well blotted out as a national or international factor by the avalanche that in 1914 began to overwhelm alike classical culture and revealed religion, we then might just as well ascribe the Fall of Rome to the inartistic materialism of the true-Roman citizen as to any other cause. For the function of the Arts in the State--apart from the consideration of æsthetics--is so to aerate the mind of the taxpayer as to make him less dull a boy. Or if you like, it is by removing him from his own immediate affairs and immersing him in those of his fellows to give him a better view of the complicated predicaments that surround him. A financier, that is to say, who turns from the bewildering and complicated antics of a maze of tape from tickers, or a realtor who turns from the consideration of corner lots and the tangled and exhausting intrigues that shall make the new boulevard of his city run through land controlled by his interests--both these pillars of the modern State may be expected to return as it were with minds refreshed if, taking a short respite from their arduous and necessary tasks, they lose themselves for a moment in the consideration of the adventures and predicaments of the _Babbitt_ of Mr. Sinclair Lewis or the attempts at escape from the chair of the central character of Mr. Dreiser’s _American Tragedy_. I permit myself to mention the works of friends of my own because I must have illustrations for my theme and those illustrations must be works of to-day of sufficient likelihood to last long enough not to be forgotten at the next fall of the leaf--and Mr. Lewis and Mr. Dreiser are so much more my personal friends than immersed in my own particular little technical swim that they are more apposite to my immediate purpose than would be, say, the authors of _The Sun Also Rises_ or of _My Heart and My Flesh_--or of _Ulysses_. 3