Thus religion in the modern novel evinces itself principally in four distinct ways: in revolt against the worn-out, cramping traditions; in a broad humanitarianism which has increased sympathy and given a fresh and vivid and impelling meaning to the word duty; in a quickened spirituality that has removed punishment and reward from the hereafter and even from the world of matter to the living human soul; and in a reaching out, vaguely, gropingly, but never futilely, toward “the stillness,” “the Ultimate Force,” “the Unknown Power,” or whatever term men prefer to use in their desire to get away from the old anthropomorphic conceptions, and yet express their consciousness of the Infinite and Divine. For “the obstinate questioning of invisible things” which began so soon as man developed from the primeval ape-forms and became Man, still goes on and will go on, in all probability, so long as the race endures; only the shape and manner of the questioning has changed as humanity has slowly learned something of its ability to mould its own destiny, the duty and privilege which it possesses of working out its own salvation. There have been many periods in the world’s history when that questioning found few to voice it aloud, yet always after such a pause it has been renewed with fresh and greater vigor. One of these pauses came in the last century; to-day the questioning resounds all about us, and one of the means through which it is being uttered most clearly is the modern novel. GIOVANNITTI _Poet of the Wop_ KENNETH MACGOWAN There are probably a lot of technical errors in Giovannitti’s poems.[1] I didn’t notice. And perhaps that is one of the tests of great poetry,—not the faults that you can’t find because they’re not there, but the faults that will not be discovered. Something else absorbs you. The significant thing is that here we have a new sort of poet with a new sort of song. And doubtless because of this song it will be many years before we see his greatness. For the song that he sings is not a pleasant song. It is the song of the people as he learned it in the Lawrence strike and hummed it over in the jails of Salem. He and his song are products of something that few Americans yet understand. We do not comprehend the labor problem of the unskilled, just as we do not comprehend the I. W. W. that has come out of it. A poet has arisen to explain.