Art. 2.-THE RELIGION OF AMERICA.

1. Elmer Gantry. By Sinclair Lewis. Cape, 1927.

2. Up from Methodism. By Herbert Asbury. Knopf, 1926.

3. The New America. By Waldo Frank. Cape, 1927. 4. America Comes of Age. By André Siegfried. Cape, 1927.

5. Americana. By H. L. Mencken. Hopkinson, 1926. 6. Straws and Prayer Books. By James Branch Cabell. Lane, 1926.

In his foreword to Mr Waldo Frank's 'The New America, Mr Hugh Walpole says: 'There has been so much during the last eight years of insistent emphasis on our kinship with America, our descent from a common seed, our universal language, and the rest. I believe this now to be the wrong line of approach. We are not alike in politics, in literature, in art, in daily life. Everything is different, even language.' This is wisely said. The exaggeration of kinship at pleasant banquets in London and New York has encouraged illusion and made disappointment inevitable. Racially, the kinship has become very limited. It is certainly not recognised by the great bulk of the American people. The idea is, indeed, resented in the Middle-West, which, politically, is by far the most important part of the United States, and I think Mr Walpole's suggestion that in one thing alone have the British and the Americans common ground-' our ideals' -is only very partially true. As Mr W. R. Hearst, the multi-millionaire newspaper proprietor, has recently discovered, nothing is so important to the world to-day as a close and appreciative friendship between the British Empire and the United States, the richest and, therefore, in modern conditions, the most powerful of contemporary nations. But friendship will not be made easier by the pretence of kinship, and it is difficult, if not impossible, without some clear understanding of the character, the qualities, and the limitations of a great nation, an amalgam of many races and many traditions, still in the making and developing a character that is something new and entirely its own.

In his America Comes of Age' Prof. André Siegfried

summarises the story of the European immigrations to North America. In the 18th century the thirteen original States were almost exclusively British and ProtestantPuritan in the north, Anglican in the south-with a comparatively small number of German and Dutch settlers in New York and Philadelphia. Between the years 1840 and 1880, nearly nine and a half million immigrants crossed the Atlantic from east to west. At its beginning this great trek was stimulated by the revolutionary year of 1848 and was afterwards largely due to the Irish famine, and as Prof. Siegfried says, by far the greater part of the immigrants came from northern and western Europe. In the decade from 1871 to 1880, ninety per cent. were British, Irish, German, and Scandinavian, and only eight per cent. were Latins and Slavs. In the later years of last century the character of the immigration entirely changed. The percentage of Latins and Slavs steadily grew from eight per cent. in the decade 1871 to 1880, to seventy-seven per cent. in the decade 1911 to 1920. At the beginning of the 19th century the United States was almost entirely a Protestant country. At the beginning of the 20th century it was largely Catholic with, in almost every city, a considerable colony of Jews.

The high-water mark of immigration, of course, has passed. Immigrants are no longer welcomed with open arms. The 'hundred per cent. American' is jealous for his country and anxious about his heritage. Yet, according to the census of 1920, the hundred per cent. Americans only amount to sixty-one per cent. of whites and to fifty-five per cent. of the total population. In 1910 Germans were the dominant foreign race; but they have been overtaken by Russian Jews, Poles, and Italians. New York is the greatest Jewish city in the world, and, Prof. Siegfried adds, one of the greatest of Roman Catholic cities. The resentment against the foreigner within the gates, and the fear that the true American spirit may be contaminated by revolutionary ideas imported from Europe, are hardly to be found in the cosmopolitan cities of the eastern sea-board; but they dominate public life in the south and the south-west, and are almost as strong in the smaller towns of the Middle-West. They have found expression in the Ku

Klux-Klan, a secret society with fantastic costumes and an elaborate ritual intended to cultivate and promote a real patriotism towards our civil government; exemplify a practical benevolence; shield the sanctity of home and the chastity of womanhood, and, by practical devotion, conserve and maintain the distinct institutions, rights and privileges, principles, traditions, and ideals of pure Americanism.'

The Jew, the Roman Catholic and the Negro are the objects of the Klan's particular suspicion. It is definitely, though unofficially, connected with the Baptists and it supports Prohibition and Fundamentalism. Its adherents are amazingly credulous and entirely ignorant of the affairs of the outer world. They are convinced, among other things, that the Pope is deliberately plotting to compel the American people to become subject to his will. It might be supposed that a society, bewildering in its childish eccentricities, could not possibly exercise any real influence in a modern civilised community; but it is quite impossible to understand the United States without first realising that things happen there, almost as a matter of course, which could hardly in any circumstances occur in Europe. For example, a gentleman known as Big Bill Thompson, whose political record may be euphemistically described as unenviable, was recently elected Mayor of Chicago by a large majority; his election propaganda mainly consisting, for some incredible reason, of vehement denunciation of King George. In many respects Chicago is the most interesting city in the United States. Mr Waldo Frank says that it is 'the city of hope, the reason is that there despair has simply not altogether won.' It is the city of stockyards, in Mr Frank's phrase, 'a sunken city of blood'; a city of underpaid workers, Slavs and Magyars and Croats living in acid-eaten, soot-stained houses.' It is a city of millionaires, and it is a city not without its own suggestive culture. It is the home of Edgar Lee Masters, for whose 'The Spoon River Anthology' much may be forgiven to Chicago. It is the home, too, of Theodore Dreiser, of Carl Sandburg and of Sherwood Anderson, and, as I have said, it is the city that made Big Bill Thompson mayor because he valiantly insulted a kindly foreign monarch whom he had never seen.

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In the endeavour to understand America, it is useless to consider European experience or tradition. It is inconceivable that Ku-Klux-Klan could in England affect the result of a parish council election; but it is probable that it will prevent the nomination as Democratic candidate for the Presidency of one of the most enlightened, capable and honest of living American politicians. Mr Al Smith, the Governor of New York, who began life in the humblest way, has shown himself a most capable administrator. He is recognised by men of all parties as possessing outstanding qualities. He has practically no rival among the Democrats, and yet he is most unlikely to reach the White House in Washington because he is a Roman Catholic. The Democratic party still depends on the support of the solid South, which is Methodist or Baptist, and will almost certainly succeed in vetoing the nomination of this politician of quite unusual eminence. It is, indeed, doubtful whether if Mr Smith were a Republican his nomination would be easier. American politics have come to be largely swayed by a theocracy. The priest has little influence, but it would be difficult to exaggerate the influence of the minister of religion.

In 1923 there were eighteen million two hundred and sixty-one thousand Roman Catholic communicants in the United States, and twenty-eight million three hundred and sixty-six thousand Protestant communicants, though, as Prof. Siegfried says, this last number would be increased probably to eighty million if a count were taken of the innumerable adherents who are in sympathy with the Protestant ideals, though not officially registered as communicants.' Considerably more than half the Protestants are either Methodists or Baptists. The Episcopal Church has just over a million communicant members almost entirely recruited from the more educated classes, cosmopolitan, wealthy, and exercising a political influence entirely out of proportion to their numbers. The influence of the Roman Catholics is

u strangely small in Federal matters, though it is large in local government. One reason for this seems to be the many races, from which the American Roman Catholics are recruited, who have yet to learn to act together. The character of the Roman Church in the

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United States is, however, rapidly changing. Large additions are made every year to the number of American-born priests who, on the whole, are men of a far higher character than the foreign-born priests. The great Eucharistic Congress last year in Chicago was evidence of the strength of American Catholicism. The Ku-Klux-Klan fear of a Roman Catholic United States will not be realised yet; but it is by no means an impossibility of the coming years. For the moment it would not be inexact to say that the Roman Church in the United States is a foreign cult, that the Episcopal Church is largely a class church, and that popular religion, the religion approved by millions of non-Church goers-by Rotarians and Elks and the members of the dozen other similar societies which are among the curious phenomena of American social life, as Mr Sinclair Lewis has described it in 'Babbitt'-is to be found in the Methodist and Baptist chapels. It was due almost entirely to the agitation carried on by these two bodies and to the influence of their ministers that the Prohibition amendment to the Constitution was accepted by the United States Congress. The Methodist Church has a two million dollar office in Washington for its Board of Temperance and Morals, with a large number of paid officials who are among the most expert lobbyists in the Federal capital. The formation of the Anti-Saloon League was the work of 'professional uplifters' very largely recruited from the ministry. Branches of the League contrived to obtain the balance of power in many electoral districts and terrified both legislators and party managers into accepting Prohibition as the alternative to losing seats. Even a Wesleyan teetotaler like Sir Henry Lunn testifies to the failure of Prohibition. Bootlegging is a great national industry, and, as an American Bishop recently said, violation of the law is a joke rather than a crime.' Instead of being able to buy reasonably good liquor at a reasonably moderate price, the American now buys poison at an exorbitant price, and the result is disastrous from both a physical and a moral point of view. From a selection of American newspaper cuttings I select almost at hazard this from the San Francisco Examiner':