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 & 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 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

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':

'Scores of young girls and youths were found stupefied by liquor in San Mateo county roadhouses by Federal Prohibition agents yesterday. Some of the girls were only fourteen or fifteen, the agents said, while in many cases their male companions were years older. Helpless under the influence of liquor, the girls were unable to resist the attentions of the men.'

And this from the Wilmington 'News':

'Since the enactment of Federal and State Prohibition laws. . . not only boys of high school age, but girls and other younger children, frequently are seen under the influence of the prohibited liquor.... Boys have been seen staggering on the streets, and asleep at their desks.'

Prohibition is the great achievement of the American Protestant sects. Drink and Darwin are anathema. In the South, at least, their mentality is shown by the acceptance of a crude fundamentalism, and by the Dallas trial which set the world laughing. It is with the character of this form of Protestantism and particularly with the character of its Ministers that Mr Lewis is concerned in his new novel 'Elmer Gantry,' a book which has not unnaturally been denounced from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and which it is a criminal offence to sell in Boston and Kansas City. It would ill become an English writer to suggest that there is truth where the most reputable American critics, such as Mr Robert Littell, who reviewed Mr Lewis's book in the 'New Republic,' find nothing but exaggeration and false charges. Elmer Gantry is certainly a repulsive person, an evil-living preacher, without scruples or morals, and with no gift but that of a cheap form of oratory. Mr Lewis would seem to have been misled into the mistake that Dickens made when he created Mr Stiggins and Mr Chadband. Dickens disliked the Dissenter and was convinced that he must be a humbug. Mr Lewis revolts against the narrow, unintelligent vulgarity of the Methodist and the Baptist chapels, and imagines robust viciousness which, as a matter of fact, is probably rare within the chapel influence. If, however, Mr Lewis cannot be regarded by the foreigner as a safe guide through the intricacies of modern American religion, his friend Mr H. L. Mencken is of considerable service

in his Americana,' a collection of extracts made from newspapers and periodicals in the year 1925. Mr Mencken is among the bitterest critics of his own people, and the cuttings have, of course, been selected with one deliberate intention; but they are none the less illuminative. Thus we are told that the Methodists of Steamboat Springs in Colorado spent one whole Sunday, starting at six in the morning and finishing at eleventhirty in the evening, reading the New Testament aloud and all through. Sixty-eight people took part in what is described as this Bible Marathon.' this Bible Marathon.' The minister of a church in Denver announced his intention to use a drink called 'whistle' instead of wine at the Communion Service. During the ceremony five large whistle signs and three linen banners were prominently displayed.' This Denver church is what is called institutional. It has departments of ancient history, baseball, dancing, real estate and scientific diet. Another Bible Marathon' was held at Middleton, Connecticut, where the Pastor succeeded in making something of a record by reading the new Testament aloud in thirteen hours. A Baptist minister in Washington took as the subject of his Sunday sermon, 'Why a man threw a large dinner dish and a chicken out of the window.' A cleaning company in Florida opened new premises with a religious service conducted by no less than four ministers. In a town in Georgia, at a dinner given to a Presbyterian Minister the table was ornamented with little groups of Biblical figures made out of sugar. At the places of the Pastor and the Elders were tiny Bibles made of candy.' In Chicago a Baptist preacher discoursed on 'the kind of girl to marry,' and exhibited five attractive young women in a frame-work of flowers and tissue paper lattice-work which had been arranged in the church in front of the Baptistry while a spot-light was turned on. A Congregational pastor in Maine has a genius for advertisement. Spot-lights play on the church steeple; soft yellow light floods the pulpit at sermon time, the rest of the church being dark.' The spot-light, indeed, seems a common device. Church-going in Michigan is made attractive by a free copy of a popular magazine being handed to each worshipper as he leaves the chapel. In a Pennsylvania Baptist church spot-lights play upon