Given free reign under the conditions herein outlined, the youth of
the land is abandoning itself to a safe and sane orgie of iconoclasm.
Satanic epigrams cloud the air of the very market-place. Poets, column
conductors, hack literary reviewers, hack romancers, lecturers,
realists, imagists, and all are gloatingly engaged in sacking the
Temple, in thumbing their nose at the taboos.

In fact so widespread is the unlicensed and unrebuked iconoclasm of
the day that a great disgust is being born in the hearts of the
pioneers. Every dog has his paradox, every hack his anti-Christ, they
bewail. And surveying the horizon despairingly they see no enemy
rushing upon them with the wind.

There are, of course, scattered here and there among the keepers of
the Seal, observant priests. They omit isolated groans. They launch
Quixotic sorties. But they retire and collapse without waiting combat.
To their denunciation of "degenerate, sinful and corrupting cesspools
of alleged art" (I quote from a review of some of my own work
appearing in an issue of the Springfield (Ill.) _Republican_),
there is no answering response. They are left abandoned, the Fiery
Cross burning down to their fingers and flickering out. They cannot be
glorified into an enemy.

On the whole I fear for the result. Ideas favor a bloody battle-ground
for birthplace. And here we stand, drawn up in battle array
discharging broadsides of "Winesburgs, Ohios," "Main Streets,"
"Cornhuskers" and the like; flying our colors valiantly--but there is
no battle. The enemy sleeps. Or the enemy wakes up and issues an
indifferent invitation that we stay to tea.