dly romance or what
was intended to be sober criticism he has been always the romancer first
and the critic afterwards.

And yet since the vogue of historical romance passed nearly a score of
years ago Mr. Churchill has honestly striven to keep up with the world
by thinking about it. One novel after another has presented some
encroaching problem of American civic or social life: the control of
politics by interest in _Mr. Crewe's Career_; divorce in _A Modern
Chronicle_; the conflict between Christianity and business in _The
Inside of the Cup_; the oppression of the soul by the lust for temporal
power in _A Far Country_; the struggle of women with the conditions of
modern industry in _The Dwelling-Place of Light_. Nothing has hurried
Mr. Churchill or forced his hand; he has taken two or three years for
each novel, has read widely, has brooded over his theme, has reinforced
his stories with solid documentation. He has aroused prodigious
discussion of his challenges and solutions--particularly in the case of
_The Inside of the Cup_. That novel perhaps best of all exhibits his
later methods. John Hodder by some miracle of inattention or some
accident of isolation has been kept in his country parish from any
contact with the doubt which characterizes his age. Transferred to a
large city he almost instantly finds in himself heresies hitherto only
latent, spends a single summer among the poor, and in the fall begins
relentless war against the unworthy rich among his congregation. Thought
plays but a trivial part in Hodder's evolution. Had he done any real
thinking or were he capable of it he must long before have freed himself
from the dogmas that obstruct him. Instead he has drifted with the
general stream and learns not from the leaders but from the slower
followers of opinion. Like the politician he absorbs through his skin,
gathering premonitions as to which way the crowd is going and then
rushing off in that direction.

If this recalls the processes of Roosevelt, hardly less does it recall
those of Mr. Churchill. Once taken by an idea for a novel he has always
burned with it as if it were as new to the world as to him. Here lies,
without much question, the secret of that genuine earnestness which
pervades all his books: he writes out of the contagious passion of a
recent convert or a still excited discoverer. Here lies, too, without
much question, the secret of Mr. Churchill's success in holding his
audiences: a sort o