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descendents, It is not intellect that has brought this about; less has it been due to education; it has been due to character and character is the expression of habits and ideas which cannot be changed in the brief period of a few generations.

To get at the character of an American Poetry then, we must understand these forces which have been at work upon our national experiences. It is interesting in light of what I have said to quote this passage from a letter which I received from an interested reader of these anthologies. "In the 1920 Anthology," it runs, "you speak of we Americans as being without a 'taproot' in literature. I know we are young, yet it seems to me that if the real hundred per-cent American writers were encouraged the 'root' would respond by a greater depth of growth and in time we would have an American literature, and I am going to suggest that you in the 1921 Anthology select writers as nearly American as possible in name and in harmony with our country—make this issue American in every way—descendents of the New England and New York and Pennsylvania and Virginia settlers.

"I have all the books you have compiled and it seems to me there are more new names of people who are not Americans, than Americans, and I am so good an American that I want us to have the first place in our literature. I do not like the melting-pot process—we really have writers who have ability and though not perfect as to literary finish, they write of things as they hear and see them and because it is the land they love—not for effect. I hope you will feel I do not mean this in criticism but as a real deeply felt plea for our people, and our America and I hope you will select from more magazines and less of the writings of the few as in especially 1919 and 1920 books."

The sentiment expressed in this amounts to a conviction though strongly and surreptitiously held is being over-borne by the changing conceptions of the