A novel is bounded by the author’s horizons. If a man can see only so far and only so deep his book will show it. If he cannot look abroad, but can perceive nothing beyond the nose on his face, that fact will be fully apparent to his co-spectators who turn the pages of his story. If he can see only certain colors those who look on with him will be aware of his defect. Above all, if he can see persons as all bad or all good, all black or all white, he will be hanged in effigy along with the puppets he has put on paper. This is the reason why every one should write a novel. There is only one thing comparable with it as a means of self-immolation. That, of course, is tenure of public office. And as there are not nearly enough public offices to serve the need of individual discipline, novelizing should be encouraged, fomented--we had almost said, made compulsory. Compulsion, however, defeats its own ends. Let us elect to public offices, as we would choose to fill scholarships, those who cannot, through some misfortune, write novels; and let us induce all the other people in the world that we can to put pen to paper--not that they may enrich the world with immortal stories, not that they may make money, become famous or come to know themselves, but solely that we may know them for what they are. If Albert Burleson had been induced to write a novel would we have made him a Congressman and would President Wilson have made him Postmaster-General? If William, sometime of Germany, had written a novel would the Germans have acquiesced in his theory of Divine Right? Georges Clemenceau wrote novels and was chosen of the people to lead them. Hall Caine and Marie Corelli and Rider Haggard and Arnold Bennett have written novels which enable us to gauge them pretty accurately--and not one of them has yet been invited to help run the League of Nations. The reason is simple: We know them too well. All privacy is scandalous. Thomas Dixon says: “It is positively immoral that the world should run on without knowing the depths to which I can sink. I must write _The Way of a Man_ and make the world properly contemptuous of me.” Zona Gale reflects to herself: “After all, with nothing but these few romances and these _Friendship Village_ stories, people have no true insight into my real tastes, affinities, predilections, qualities of mind. I will write about a fruit and pickle salesman, an ineffectual sort of person who becomes, almost involuntarily, a paperhanger. That will give them the idea of me they lack.”