ts refused to despair of the situation.
They affirmed their faith in our spiritual and imaginative substance
persistently and in the face of apathy and discouragement. They made
us believe in ourselves, and now American poetry is at the threshold
of a new era. It is more vital than contemporary English poetry.

Has the time not come at last to cease lamenting the pitiful gray
shabbiness of American fiction? We say that we have no faith in it,
and we judge it by the books and stories that we casually read. If
we are writers of fiction ourselves, perhaps we judge it by personal
and temperamental methods and preferences, just as certain groups of
American poets of widely different sympathies judge the poetry of
their contemporaries to-day. Let us affirm our faith anyhow in our
own spiritual substance. Let us believe in our materials and shape
them passionately to a creative purpose. Let us be enthusiastic about
life around us and the work that is being done, and in much less than
twelve years from now a jury of novelists and critics will pronounce
a very different verdict on American fiction from their verdict of
to-day.

During the past year I have read over twenty-two hundred short stories
in a critical spirit, and they have made me lastingly hopeful of our
literary future. A spirit of change is acting on our literature. There
is a fresh living current in the air. The new American spirit in fiction
is typically voiced by such a man as Mr. Lincoln Colcord in a letter
from which I have his permission to quote.

"There are many signs," he writes, "that literature in America stands
at a parting of ways. The technical-commercial method has been fully
exploited, and, I think, found wanting in essential results, although
it is a step toward higher things. The machinery for a great literature
stands ready. The public taste is now being created. Add to this, the
period in our national life: we are coming to our artistic maturity.
Add the profound social transition that was upon us before the war.
And add any factor you may choose for what may come after the war; for
I think that momentous events stand on the threshold of the world.

"The main trouble with the fellows who are writing in America to-day
is that they write too much--or rather, publish too much. A writer
should be very glad to accept a small income for many years; he
should deliberately keep his fortunes within bounds; and take his
time. All this would have been a