SPACE, SUN, AND AIR 271 



Reappraisal of American sources and growth is proceeding now so vigor- 

 ously that there is perhaps some danger of our falling into hopeless thinking 

 about ourselves and our country. That would be a natural reaction from 

 optimistic excesses in the past. 



Even so, to all who whack us awake from childish dreams of illimitable 

 wealth and beauty forever to be grabbed and squandered, thanks. One such 

 is H. L. Mencken of The Baltimore Sun papers. His journalistic flail went to 

 work early in the century. His whoops of praise and derision, as a literary 

 critic, high-lighted talents such as those of Sinclair Lewis, the creator of 

 Babbitt. Like Mencken, Lewis plays rough with some of our fondest illusions; 

 but there was a sort of tenderness in Lewis' presentation of this fellow 

 creature, Babbitt, the pioneer turned timid burgher, fat, pursy, afraid to look 

 at forces encompassing his spirit, afraid to knock or say his say against them, 

 afraid to awaken, to shatter the waning dream, to take stock honestly. 



Mencken could hardly be called a devotee of the natural order, of woods, 

 of pastoral scenes, or of country matters generally. He is a born cockney, 

 little interested in yielding earth. But the roaring courage with which he 

 spoke out against that in his immediate environment which he found damag- 

 ing and preposterous set an example now widely followed by editors and col- 

 umnists; and this has been enormously invigorating, especially in the South. 



You see many better- tended areas of woodland and farm land now as you 

 travel southward than you saw 10 years ago; but the most vigorous portent 

 of an actual reconstruction is to be seen, in little patches, in the columns of 

 southern papers. In editorial pieces, in contributed articles, in letters from 

 the people, in stray news items, and the work of signed columnists, hammer- 

 ing away, it is evident thaj; a new leaven is at work. Visitors from without, if at 

 all polite or prudent, still may hesitate to speak harshly of the southern scene 

 and prospect. It is now less necessary. The livest minds of the South, academic 

 and technical, agrarian and industrial, are talking it out, openly, in print. 



The very source of most southern writers' strength is a deep attachment 

 to what is left of the southern pastoral and woodland scene. This somewhat 

 narrows their general appeal, and southern editors and columnists are 

 generally not as widely heard as Washington and New York City columnists 

 are. But no better writing is now being done anywhere in the country than 



