for a time a terrible answer to prayer, supplying an ideal cause, an object of devotion palpable and legitimate according to the code of his own day. It called all men equally to labor, live, or die to make this world a better place where babes unborn might yet have life and have it more abundantly. Some such spiritual renaissance certain of our soldier-poets have sung, especially in the early days of the World War. To men like Rupert Brooke the bugles of war
"Brought us for our dearth
Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain."
No static heaven, his whose body lies in "some corner of a foreign field," his heart,
"all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given."
Will some one write us, then, new hymns suited to the social order and the reverent dignity of our times? We who can no longer sing
"I'm but a stranger here;
Heaven is my home,"
have sung exultantly the more fitting words of our newest and greatest national song:
"America! America
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea."
